The Bibi Files: The truth Netanyahu doesn’t want you to see

Every year from October to December  Oscar contenders try to crack the US film market, hoping to secure a coveted Academy Award nomination. 

Millions of dollars are spent on PR campaigns as publicists scurry about, attempting to generate positive press coverage and court influential Oscar voters. Meanwhile across Los Angeles and New York, films big and small flood cinemas before the end of the year to secure the minimum number of screenings to qualify for awards eligibility.

But of the buzzed-about pics this year, one has been largely absent: The Bibi Files, the hair-raising documentary exposee about the corruption charges brought against Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli prime minister and recipient of an ICC arrest warrant. (He and his family have denied the allegations against them.)

Produced by Oscar- and Emmy-winning documentary director Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side, Going Clear: Scientology & the Prison of Belief) and directed by three-time Emmy-nominated film-maker Alexis Bloom (We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks), The Bibi Files enjoyed a thunderous bow at the Toronto Film Festival in September.

Gibney aspired to secure US theatrical distribution deals but they never materialised: instead the film screened for one week at the Laemmle Monica Film Center in southern California, where this writer watched it, and the IFC Center in New York. 

Numerous US media outlets have baulked from coverage: in December, Gibney said that “no mainstream outlet will show the film in the US”. Despite this, The Bibi Files made the shortlist of 15 documentaries that Oscar voters will now reduce to five nominations ahead of the awards ceremony on 3 March 2025.

In Israel itself, Netanyahu failed in his bid to ban The Bibi Files, although it is still not being screened. And while it’s starting to receive coverage in Europe, including in the UK, the US remains “nervous” as Bloom puts it.

Netanyahu under pressure

After only a few minutes, it becomes apparent why The Bibi Files has caused a stir. 

Netanyahu creeps onto the screen, sporting his signature sinister smirk - but something is distinctly different about his facial expressions and body language. There is a visible discomfort bogging him down. His demeanour reeks of restlessness. His familiar guise of confidence fails to conceal a palpable weakness; his quiet dread at a looming danger that constantly threatens to blow his cover. 

This is Netanyahu like you’ve never seen him before - and it’s a sight to behold.

The crux of the film is the never-seen-before police interrogation footage of Netanyahu, his wife, Sara and their eldest son, the ultra right-wing Yair. Other figures who are shown being questioned include Hollywood billionaire producer Arnon Milchan; Israeli-American billionaire Miriam Adelson; Israeli telecom mogul Shaul Elovitch; and Nir Hefetz, a former spokesman for Netanyahu. 

Thousands of hours of these taped interrogations, recorded between 2016 and 2018, were leaked to Gibney during spring 2023.  Shortly afterwards, he approached Bloom and suggested that the footage form the basis of a full-length feature. 

“I knew I was never going to get an honest, sit-down interview with Benjamin Netanyahu,” Bloom told Middle East Eye.  “This was as close to getting an honest interview with him as I could’ve gotten under these circumstances.”

Little of what The Bibi Files offers is new to anyone who has been closely following the Netanyahu corruption case. Rather, its brilliance comes in how Bloom astutely and perceptively frames the questioning, turning the sporadic footage into an incendiary narrative about unchecked power, grave moral corruption, and forbidding sociopathy.

If it was fiction thenThe Bibi Files would have been deemed far-fetched: no man can be this devious, this contemptible, this malicious. To watch it is to confront the sheer wickedness of this world in unflinching detail.

The opening scenes include Israel’s war on Gaza, which the film-makers imply has come about through Netanyahu’s self-interest. From there it moves to the expensive gifts given by the likes of Milchan and Adelson, including champagne and cigars, all so they can remain close to the prime minister’s circle. 

Bloom then gradually reveals how the staggering web of corruption in which Netanyahu and his family have allegedly been embroiled runs far wider than the mere acquisition of presents.

The investigations show that Netanyahu’s wife – who has a clear drinking problem according to both Milchan’s former personal assistant, Hadas Klein, and her ex-housekeeper – solicited gifts totalling one million shekels (around $280,000). “Were the gifts volunteered or demanded?” Klein is asked by police. “They were demanded,” she asserts. 

'Your evidence is utter and complete bullshit'

- Sara Netanyahu responds during a police interview

The Bibi Files also reports how Milchan, an award-winning film producer, was once denied a long-term US visa, so gave gifts to Netanyhau to get former US Sectary of State John Kerry to reverse the decision. Milchan would also receive tax breaks after Netanyhau put pressure on his finance minister to change the law.

More critical was the case of Shaul Elovitch, the telecom mogul who Netanyhau rescued from bankruptcy in exchange for the prime minister’s family clandestinely taking control of Walla! Elovitch’s widely popular media outlet.

Reporters were fired and the editorial line changed to present favourable coverage of the prime minister and Yair, who was being groomed to succeed him according to Uzi Beller, Netanyahu’s former long-term friend 

Bloom was particularly surprised by the disrespect and rudeness of the Netanyahu family. At one point in The Bibi Files, Sara Netanyahu tells the police: “Your evidence is utter and complete bullshit”. Throughout the film, the prime minister asserts repeatedly that “he didn’t remember".

Bloom observes: “I’ve always been told that he has this superpower of a memory. He says he doesn’t remember in situations that any human being would remember.”

Then there is how Netanyahu recorded a conversation with Arnon ‘Noni’ Mozes, the editor of an Israeli newspaper, then denied it. The leaked footage includes the police then playing the recording to the prime minister, which came from a cell phone in his pocket but which he said he could not recall making.

Bloom says: “I don’t know how you can forget that you were secretly recording somebody when the cell phone was in your pocket. I was surprised at how often he lied.” 

Does she think that Netanyahui was conscious of his lying? Or did he simply believe that the end justified the means and that his actions were for the greater good of Israel?

“I think that the best liars always believe in their own lies. I think that Netanyahu genuinely thinks that he’s the smartest, most capable person in the whole of Israel. So many people who have worked with him told me that – his former chief of staff, the former heads of the Shin Bet, among others. The word that often came up is ‘dwarfs.’ He thinks he’s a genius and everyone else are dwarfs.” 

Israel's far right and the US

Netanyahu’s lawyer advised him to resign due to the accusations, reports the documentary, but according to sources, the prime minister was anxious that if he did so then more of his activities would be exposed. 

The rest is history: to remain in power Netanyahu forged a new alliance with the far right, leading to the largest annexation of Palestinian lands in recent history, widespread protests in Israel against his planned judicial reforms and the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

Beller paints an unflattering portrait of the prime minister, who he says was very macho but had few close friends. His childhood was spent in the shadow of his older, more charismatic brother, military officer Yonatan, known as Yoni, whose early death during the 1976 Entebbe hostage rescue paved the way for Benjamin to enter politics.

In 1993, after he acknowledged his involvement in a sex scandal, Netanyahu reshaped his relationship with his wife who would prove to be instrumental in the formation of her husband’s policies. 

But The Bibi Files is not just an expertly made investigation of Israel's most notorious head of state: it’s a Macbeth-like fable of a man punch-drunk on blind ambition; a penetrating study of someone corrupted and empowered by his violent addiction to power. 

“When you start to break the rules and value yourself more than the civic body, it leads you to make terrible decisions,” says Bloom. “Some are small, like champagne and cigars, and some are huge, but they’re all related. Netanyahu has a lot of skeletons in his closet, and I think he’s kind of frightened. He’s a wounded animal, and people who have something to fear behave in a remarkably aggressive way.” 

The film repeatedly touches upon Netanyahu’s relationship with the US, where he spent much of his childhood, also as a student at MIT in Boston and the Israeli representative at the UN. Time and time again, Netanyahu parades for his domestic electorate his strong bond with the US, which comes over as Israel's chief enabler. 

Scenes from Netanyahu’s intentionally provocative speech at the US Congress in 2024  – which Nimrod Novik, a former senior adviser to late Israeli president Shimon Peres, describes as “the best-articulated bunch of empty slogans” – is a sobering reminder of the impunity with which Washington has stubbornly safeguarded the Israeli leader.

 “Sending weapons to Israel and providing him with cover are certainly more consequential than Bibi putting on a call to Kerry,” Bloom says. 

But while the US relationship with Israel is touched on in The Bibi Files, it never becomes the focus of the documentary. Bloom hopes that one day someone will make a film about the two states - or may do it herself.

“Somebody in the film says that ‘the US doesn’t know how to call Netanyahu out,’ and it’s true. So far, the Biden administration has done nothing to penalise Bibi for his lies. They might criticise him privately behind closed doors, but there are no consequences.”

7 October and the war on Gaza

The Palestinian attacks on southern Israel on 7 October dominate the last and arguably the most contentious part of The Bibi Files.

Gili Schwartz, a survivor of the attack on Kibbutz B’eri, blames Netanyahu for the double agony of witnessing her neighbours being killed. “Now I have to endure seeing my neighbours in Gaza getting killed."

Schwartz says she doesn’t want to see Netanyahu’s face, and that the families of the hostages are anxious to speak out against him in case “he might not help them” if they do. 

Many of the experts Bloom interviews say that Netanyahu is responsible for the continuous existence of Hamas, whose threat to Israel he can argue justifies his retention of power. But it is clear that Qatar’s funding of Hamas happened under Netanyahu’s watch; and that he could have stopped the flow of money to Hamas but never did (or else did not want to).

“It was a spectacularly bad decision on his part. Israel controls all the money going into both the West Bank and Gaza," says Bloom. "Under Netanyahu’s watch, the money to Hamas escalated and escalated and escalated and escalated, because it suited him.

“It’s a ‘divide and conquer’ mentality. When Hamas is strong, he could say: ‘Why should I negotiate? They’re extremist, they’re flourishing, and they don’t get along with Palestinian Authority.’ The survival of Hamas was important to Netanyahu.” 

The Bibi Files has faced an arduous journey since its Toronto premiere. It was also being edited until the last minute to include recent events such as Israel’s pager attacks on Lebanon and subsequent invasion.

But despite Gibney’s influence and respect in the film industry, the documentary has not been afforded the same profile as other awards contenders.

“The streamers today are not that interested in political content, unless it’s super clear-cut like the Navalny film which was a success because the pro-Russia lobby in America is not very vocal or big,” says Bloom. “I was at the News and Documentary Emmy Awards this year. This Ukrainian film won a bunch of awards, but it didn’t have distribution. The Palestinian-Israeli documentary No Other Land also doesn’t have distribution. It understandable that streamers would baulk away from a film very critical of a sitting Israeli leader."

She also says that it was very hard to fund the film as financiers were extremely nervous. “There is no institutional appetite for grappling with the really important questions of our day, and I expect things to get worse under Trump."

The worry for her is that people will self-censor weather than waiting to be shut down by the authorities. “There’s something more insidious in the US. It’s about money, and not wanting to make waves. I find it incredibly disheartening and sad, but we’ll have to continue spread things in a very grass roots way.”

But while previous Israeli leaders have been jailed, including President Moshe Katsav in 2011 and Ehud Olmert in 2015, Bloom doesn’t envision Netanyahu going to prison. 

“I see him weaselling out of it in some way, even though there seems to be ample evidence against him. It’s gone on for so long and I think he’ll find a way to evade justice. The longer the trial goes on, the more he will be able to side shuffle out of responsibility.”

Rather Bloom believes Netanyahu will strike a plea deal or else change the legal system. “He will eviscerate the judicial system. He will push out the attorney general, who is not sympathetic to him, and he’ll find a way to restructure the judiciary in a way that benefits him.”

Are Trump and Netanyahu the same?

Ample comparisons have been drawn between Donald Trump, who returns to the White House in January, and Netanyahu: two privileged men who have managed to bamboozle millions of people with their self-serving agendas. But Bloom believes the situation in Israel differs from that in the US. 

“Netanyahu is able to pull the wool over the people’s eyes because he managed to make them think that he’s good for their security, and that’s what I tried to show in the film,” she says. “People did vote for him because they believed he would protect them, which I think it’s crazy because Israel has never been a more dangerous place to be Jewish.

"He constantly says, ‘We’re fighting a war on seven fronts.’ Well, how about NOT fight a war on seven fronts?”

Rather, Bloom sees both Trump and Netanyahu as akin to successful snake oil salesmen. 

“After 7 October, Netanyahu was deeply unpopular because people were like, ‘holy shit! This happened on his watch.’ And he’s not Mr Security. He’s so obsessed with the chess board: Iran, Syria etc. 

“But he forgot about the Palestinians on his doorstep, who are a much more difficult problem to reckon with: a problem that is much more vexing and intractable. He loves to operate on this Churchillian level, setting his sight on the great foe that is Iran. 

“7 October showed him that in fact need to, but he doesn’t have an answer to that. And unless he engages with the very complicated, emotionally fraught, ongoing issues that Palestinians presents Israel with, Israel will never be a democratic state and will never be accepted on a world stage.” 

At time of publication, The Bibi Files can be streamed in the US, UK, Australia and Spain among others.