National Post (National Edition)
Israel bristles as Netanyahu heads to court
‘Citizens of Israel, what is on trial today is an effort to frustrate the will of the people — the attempt to bring down me and the right-wing camp.”
So began a speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the steps of a Jerusalem courthouse on Sunday afternoon, surrounded by a cluster of key loyalists, who, despite wearing masks, were craning and carefully jostling to squeeze into the camera shot. He was about to enter the courtroom to hear multiple criminal charges read out against him on the first day of his long-awaited trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust.
Understandably keen to avoid the spectacle and humiliation, Netanyahu’s counsel had requested that he be permitted to skip the day’s proceedings. After all, they said, the reading of the charges into the official court record is a mere formality.
Request denied, replied the panel of three judges hearing the case. Netanyahu is no different from any other criminal defendant. He must be in court to hear the charges against him.
Netanyahu, however, is most definitely not like any other criminal defendant. As he reminded the nation on Sunday, he is the longest-serving prime minister of Israel and his right-wing bloc commanded the largest proportion of the vote in the March election.
“The goal (of this trial) is to bring down a strong prime minister from the right-wing and thus keep the right away from power for many years. By the way, they would not mind if some co-operative poodle came along from the right — those also exist — but me, I am no poodle,” he said.
An indefatigable spirit, and an equally impressive political communicator, Netanyahu pulled no punches in what was, arguably, among his most important domestic public addresses. Accusing the “left” of plotting and failing to unseat him at the ballot box for the last decade, he said his political enemies had hatched a broader conspiracy, enlisting law enforcement and the justice systems, as well as the “leftist media.”
His innocence or guilt will be decided in court, giving him the further distinction of being one of the very few Western leaders to ever hold the highest office while sitting on the hard, wooden seat reserved for criminal defendants. In fact, a proud Netanyahu made sure to remain standing until the very last camera was in the hallway and the courtroom door closed. They would not get the shot they relished: Bibi sitting in the prisoner’s dock.
The next court date is at least a month away and will likely be postponed, as Netanyahu’s legal team has requested delays for various procedural reasons, a not uncommon occurrence in complex trials. However, it is also expected that this trial will be riven with adjournments and delays and could take years to complete: because the defendant is the prime minister of Israel; because he intends to fulfil his very onerous duties to the state and its people while on trial; and because he will simply never submit, resign or allow his resolve to wane. It’s just not in his DNA.
All of which raises a different set of legitimate and significant issues: will Netanyahu be able to meet the demands of leadership while also being embroiled in the legal battle of his life? One possibility floated was that he would attend his trial three days each week and turn to governing the rest of the time. That won’t happen. After all, it is not sufficient for a national leader to devote only part of his attention to the job, particularly in a country so complex and with the unceasingly urgent security tension that afflicts Israel.
Then there is the matter of the prime minister’s publicly articulated defence: that there is no merit to the actual charges; the evidence has been “cooked” by enemies suffused with malevolence; and that constituencies in the police force and justice systems have conspired with some of the media to destroy the prime minister, in an obsessive attempt to carry out a bloodless coup, to accomplish in court what they cannot achieve in legitimate, free and fair elections.
Netanyahu may be right. He may be wrong. But the constant denigration of key democratic institutions by the prime minister and his supporters is not conducive to a well-functioning democracy.
And that is exactly what Bibi says is the core issue: the deep rot that has festered and contaminated certain pillars of democracy — like the justice system and law enforcement. They must be exposed and rooted out. And if that is his cross to bear, so to speak, to get the job done, well, then, he’ll bear it.
As he departed the Knesset midday Sunday following the first cabinet meeting of his newly sworn-in unity government, Netanyahu stopped to receive support and well-wishes from a group of elderly Holocaust survivors. One woman, who had been a partisan fighter during the Second World War, told him that she prayed for him now as she prayed for her sister when she was wounded and sick in the forest.
Another man said: “Wolves are coming to devour you. You’re not alone, we’re with you.”
“They brought me to tears,” the prime minister shared on the courthouse steps in a rare display of vulnerability and emotion that was at once genuine and brilliant PR.
Netanyahu’s trial has become a metaphor and flash point for deeply entrenched frustrations, and will be a lightning rod for how Israel reconstitutes itself in the coming decades. Many feel that if he triumphs, it will be the death knell of democracy. Bibi, however, sees things diametrically opposite.
Netanyahu has said that he will never plead guilty to a lesser crime in return for a reduced sentence. In the meantime, Israel bristles, this time with a different kind of tension.
DEFINITELY NOT LIKE ANY OTHER CRIMINAL DEFENDANT.