The endless agony of the absence of education
Will the country’s children ever recover from the pandemic?
When James Brown sang the words “without an education, you might as well be dead” in 1966, he could not have foreseen how the coronavirus crisis of 2020 would force children out of their classrooms.
Today, health and education experts are raising the alarm over the unprecedented educational, medical, social and emotional challenges that children are facing from the pandemic. The experts believe it could take years to fully understand the full effects of closing schools on this generation.
“We know that education is one of the major determinants of health – short- and longterm,” Ora Paltiel, a professor at the Hebrew University-Hadassah Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine, told The Jerusalem Post.
One of the government’s biggest pandemic failures was its inability to send children back to school this fall.
While in the majority of developed countries, students returned to their classrooms this September, Israeli students remained at home. Between September and the end of January, students of all ages in most Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development-member countries studied at least partially in their classrooms. During that same period, in Israel, not a single day of full schooling took place in schools or preschools.
On September 1, classes were fully opened only in the green and yellow localities. They were then closed on September 15. Students began returning to school again in late October, but middle schoolers – those in grades seven to 10 – started attending school only in December, just before they went on Hanukkah break.
Then, with coronavirus cases rising, classes were again suspended until January. Middle schoolers went back only in March, shortly before they left for the Passover holiday that ends on Monday.
“We found ourselves in a situation where our school system was not really ready for such a pandemic, with really big classes, transportation that takes people from different age groups and regions to one school – and it’s a really challenging situation when you are trying to control infection,” said head of Public Health Services Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis last week during a Hebrew University webinar on the topic of the impact of COVID-19 on children.
She said that every time Israel tried to reopen schools, infection spread.
“There was a point in time during the third lockdown where we did not close schools, just the rest was closed and schools stayed open, and until we closed schools, we could not bring infection down,” she said. “When we have 1,200 severe cases in hospitals and they are overwhelmed, then you cannot just leave schools open.”
Yet, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, few countries closed their schools for periods as long as Israel. Instead of modeling after Australia, Finland, France, Iceland, New Zealand or even Japan, Israel’s schooling situation looked more like that of Poland, Turkey or Mexico.
While the Finance Ministry refused to transfer the necessary budgets to allow for safer, small-group study within schools, Israeli students were forced into distance learning, which all studies to date have shown is less effective from an educational standpoint and harmful socially and emotionally.
Research by the United States-based global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company found that “the impact of school closure on outcomes is tied to how long the closure lasts.”
PROLONGED STAYS at home, lack of routine, worries about unemployment and the family’s financial needs led to emotional and mental stress, said Vered Windman, executive director of the Israel National Council for the Child, who also spoke during the webinar. She said a lack of computers, Internet connection – and in some cases Internet infrastructure – as well as parental assistance affected the ability of children to learn.
Children’s educational challenges can be divided into three categories, explained Prof. Yaacov Yablon, head of the Churgin School of Education at Bar-Ilan University. He told the Post that the first group – an estimated 30% of Israel’s students – would have basic communication challenges, having not interacted with others in meaningful ways for the better part of a year. These students will need support to regain or rebuild their learning and relationship skills to become members of the learning community once again.
A second group will be those who struggled to learn on Zoom and started receiving bad marks in school. Now, they might believe they are not good students or cannot succeed in a certain subject. He said these students will need to be built up in whatever area they are lacking. Otherwise, they risk giving up, which could have a long-term impact on their education.
Finally, Yablon said, there will be a group of students who appear “normal” but there are major gaps between them and other students. When observed on their own, everything can seem OK – like they are managing. But when you compare them to their peers, there are major gaps. These students, he said, will be the hardest to spot quickly.
Although distance learning was handled differently by teachers around the world and in local classrooms, according to the McKinsey report, there is one thing on which all educators seem to agree: a computer is no match for a classroom as a place for kids to learn.
The company polled educators in eight countries, and all of them said that the remote learning experienced over the past year is a poor substitute for being back in the classroom, giving it an average score of five out of 10.
The study also found that teachers who taught at public versus private schools gave remote learning lower marks – 4.8 versus 6.2 out 10, with 10 being the highest score. Teachers working in areas in which there were high levels of poverty found virtual classrooms even more ineffective, marking them as low as 3.5.
“Teachers in schools where more than 80% of students live in households under the poverty line reported an average of 2.5 months of learning loss, compared with a reported loss of 1.6 months in schools where more than 80% of students live in households above the poverty line,” McKinsey showed.
In general, studies from several countries suggested that school shutdowns in the second quarter of 2020 put students up to six months behind the academic milestones their cohorts would typically be expected to reach. Losses were greatest in math.
“We talk about resilient children, and we want to believe that many children will get back on track,” Yablon told the Post. “However, it is more likely that we are going to see huge gaps between children, that students will come to universities with lower capabilities and not really ready for higher education.”
THESE CHALLENGES do not end in the classroom. Education
has a direct correlation to physical health and even life expectancy, said Prof. Orly Manor, head of the Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine at the Hebrew University.
Life expectancy rises commensurately to the level of education.
According to the most recent report by the Central Bureau of Statistics, life expectancy at age 30 by education level looks as follows: men who studied for 11 years (until the end of elementary school) are expected to live another 49 years, and females 53. Those who finished high school get another 52 or 56, respectively. And people with tertiary or academic degrees show another 56 or 59 years.
Moreover, the risk of developing dementia or late-life depression also increases for those who are less educated, Manor said.
A study published by the American Medical Association’s JAMA Network earlier this year modeled the expected years of life lost (YLL) in association with primary school closures in early 2020 and compared them to potential YLL, had schools remained open. Based on the authors’ estimates, “there was a 98.9% probability that the decisions to close US primary schools in March of 2020 could be associated with more eventual YLL than would be observed if these schools had remained open, even if schools remaining open had led to a substantial increase in the rate of death observed during the early phase of the pandemic.”
Sleep habits were also harmed by the pandemic, said Alex Gileles-Hillel, a pediatric pulmonologist and sleep physician from Hadassah Medical Center.
He told the Post that in a survey of 4,000 adults worldwide it was discovered that there was a “very significant increase” in symptoms of insomnia, difficulty sleeping, general poor sleep quality, increased consumption of sleeping aids and medication.
It is understood that kids experienced similar challenges.
The result of a combination of lack of sleep, increased screen time, greater junk food consumption and less exercise will likely be weight gain, Gileles-Hillel said.
“Overweight kids turn into fat adolescents and then into obese adults,” he said, though he stressed that there is not yet enough post-pandemic data on this topic.
He said children are reporting more general anxiety behaviors and fears of staying in bed in the dark. Parents report that children are off routine, which ultimately disrupts their daily behaviors.
“Kids who don’t sleep well are prone to acting out, inattentive behavior bordering on attention problems, and I am afraid these issues will become more relevant,” Gileles-Hillel warned.
FINALLY, THERE is emerging evidence that the stress of online learning and social isolation is leading to mental health issues among young people, too – even if they are
not immediately obvious, according to Prof. Yuval Bloch of the Shalvata Mental Health Center and Tel Aviv University.
His center helped run a multicenter study comparing mental health emergency and psychiatric admissions by youth during 2019 and 2020. They are now working on data from 2021.
During the Hebrew U. webinar, he showed slides that countered what he said the research team expected to find: emergency room visits, psychiatric center admissions and referrals to certified specialists – including by firsttime patients – were all down.
However, he said that he does not believe this is due to a lack of necessity for those visits. Rather, he said, schools are probably the central contributor in referrals of kids going for therapy and other help – and children were not in school.
Bloch also noted that it can take time for mental health issues to reveal themselves – “there is not a one-day or two-week incubation period for these problems.” And he said that short-term findings could look quite different from what the country starts to see as students return to school after Passover.
Windman, who spoke after Bloch, said she agrees. There were less reports of children-atrisk to child protection officers, but there was limited availability of professional services in the community and less youth activities, which increased the difficulty of identifying these youth.
In contrast, however, there was a visible increase in reports of youth on the streets and an increase in inquiries to NGOs and school psychologists regarding loneliness and distress. There was also a reported increased sense of isolation among children and known increases in risky behavior among youth, such as alcohol and substance abuse.
One study showed a 40% increase in the number of children at risk of suicide treated by educational psychologists. There was also a 57% increase in incidents of everything ranging from shaming, bullying and harassment reported by children and youth themselves.
THE MCKINSEY REPORT rolled out a series of recommendations to help support students who were left behind, recommending high-density tutoring or more personalized mastery-based programs. It said that students may need to spend more time in their classrooms, either converting to longer school days or using vacation time to learn.
“Given the breadth and scope of learning loss, there could be a compelling case for a systemic solution as part of the recovery,” the report said.
Shortly before the elections, the government reviewed a NIS 2.5 billion four-stage plan for bridging the educational, social and emotional gaps plaguing Israel’s students.
The first stage involved extending the school year through the end of July. The school year usually ends for middle schoolers on June 20 and elementary schoolers on June 30.
The program would be available for students in preschool through grade 11.
However, the plan never passed, and it will be at least another few months until a new government is formed.
There is no national framework for closing the educational, medical, social and emotional gaps that have developed among students over the past year, Yablon said.
“No one talks about how we should deal with these difficulties,” he said. “Teachers, school counselors – everyone finds themselves dealing with it on their own.”
He said that he has seen many children who have been through tough times grow up and do very well; but without resources and support, “we will see very poor outcomes from this pandemic.”
Alroy-Preis said that the Health Ministry has determined that the traffic-light model does not work for schools, because it changes significantly and quickly and cannot provide stability for kids, parents and schools.
As such, she said there is a professional task force of representatives from the Health, Finance and Education ministries that is meeting now to determine a plan for next year.
“Hopefully, we will come up with a better model to keep kids in school all the time,” she said.
Otherwise, James Brown’s warning about the dangers posed by the lack of education could ring even more true than when he first sang those words 45 years ago.
After Yeshua, former Walla chief executive editor Aviram Elad, former news director Michal Klein and former news desk head Amit Eshel are expected to testify.
They are expected to fill in the picture of what happened within Walla under orders from the prime minister, Sara Netanyahu, Yair Netanyahu and Hefetz.
Elad is also expected to testify about attempts by the Netanyahu family to get him fired. This was due to occasions where he failed to cooperate with the scheme and allowed publication of negative stories related to the Submarine Affair.
Rubinstein was primarily responsible for passing on instructions in around 40 different incidents to Walla on behalf of Netanyahu from late 2013 until March 2014.
Yet, Hefetz, Sara Netanyahu and the prime minister himself got much more personally involved in passing on messages starting in March 2014.
There will be a debate about whether the prime minister himself can be tied directly to 150 incidents out of the 315 or to as few as a dozen, as Netanyahu’s lawyers have claimed.
But for each of the 150 times, the prosecution said, Netanyahu was directly tied to a request, as opposed to the full 315 incidents in which those in his circle made requests, the prosecution will bring one or more witnesses or text messages to prove his direct involvement.
This is clear from the fact that the prosecution left Netanyahu out of around 165 incidents, deciding that for those events, it lacked sufficient direct proof.
Either way, it will be hard for Netanyahu to argue that he was not involved in the broad project connecting Walla coverage and communications policy. He successfully claimed this in Case 3000, the Submarine Affair, but there, no one ever pointed a finger directly at him.
The Yes-Bezeq merger saga
By July 2014, Elovitch had pushed for Netanyahu to help provide government approval for the sale of Yes from Eurocom to Bezeq – all companies Elovitch had interests in, which put him in a conflict of interest.
Communications minister Avi Berger was conditioning the sale on Bezeq undertaking various market reforms which the ministry had demanded as well as maintaining various financial walls to limit dangers from Elovitch’s conflict.
Hefetz will testify that a few days before a major November 28, 2014, meeting between Netanyahu and Elovitch, he showed the prime minister proposals Elovitch gave Hefetz to gut Berger’s conditions.
Next, Hefetz will testify that Netanyahu requested that he
carefully smuggle Elovitch into the meeting with him in a way that would cover up that they had met.
Both Hefetz and former Communications Ministry director-general turned state’s witness Shlomo Filber will testify that on December 9, 2014, Netanyahu appointed Eitan Tzafrir as chief of staff at the Communications Ministry to act as his long arm.
Subsequently, Netanyahu met with Berger and ordered him to carry out Elovitch’s wishes regarding the Bezeq-Yes merger, Berger will testify.
Berger and former Communications Ministry deputy director-general Haran Levaot will testify that they repeatedly stuck to their guns on the conditions for a Yes-Bezeq merger and ignored Tzafrir, who they will say was advocating problematic policies.
There will be multiple witnesses who will testify that this made Elovitch furious, which he asked Hefetz to pass on to the prime minister.
On May 17, 2015, as soon as Netanyahu formed a new government, he fired Berger.
He eventually appointed Shlomo Filber to carry out his orders to satisfy Elovitch so that the alleged media bribery for help with communications policy scheme could continue without further interference.
Filber was a longtime aide and was Netanyahu’s campaign manager from December 2014 to March 2015 with no background in communications policy.
In parallel, Tzafrir acted with then-Netanyahu chief of staff David Sharan to get professional approvals from the Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Council relating to the YesBezeq merger.
A big piece of Netanyahu’s defense has been that the apolitical officials at the council approved the merger.
However, council officials will testify that Sharan and Tzafrir learned from other council officials that they would proceed with approvals only if Netanyahu personally requested it.
On March 24, 2015, Netanyahu sent a letter requesting the approvals, and by April 16, 2015, top cable council officials will testify, they told their subordinates to move things along for the approvals of the merger.
In parallel, from January 2015 to August 2015, Netanyahu and his associates’ involvement in Walla exploded to 100 incidents, many witnesses will testify.
Again, it will be the granular detail that will undermine Netanyahu’s defenses.
Next, Filber will testify that in late May 2015 he was coached by Tzafrir about three main issues that Netanyahu wanted him to focus on.
One of them was moving forward with the Yes-Bezeq merger which Berger had blocked by conditioning approval on reforms.
The role of Shlomo Filber
Filber was confirmed for his post on June 7, 2015, and he will testify that shortly after that he was called to a special meeting with Netanyahu.
In August 2019, it was reported by Channel 12 that Filber’s testimony about this meeting with Netanyahu will include that it was clear to him that carrying out some of Netanyahu’s orders would be “a national disaster” in terms of the good of the public, but that he followed the orders anyway.
Incidentally, this conversation is what led to Filber becoming the star witness to bring down the prime minister.
In fact, it was Filber’s turning state’s witness in February 2018 that was the key moment that turned Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit against Netanyahu in the various criminal cases.
Filber will testify that during that June 2015 meeting with Netanyahu, there was a celebratory mood over Netanyahu’s election win. Netanyahu told Filber they would continue talking real business on the couch as he smoked a cigar.
Filber will testify that during this conversation, Netanyahu raised two primary issues for him in his new role as Communications Ministry director-general: approving the Bezeq-Yes merger and moderating price changes and competition against Bezeq.
“Don’t completely annul the [new] competition [against Bezeq], but see what can be done about the pricing [issue], maybe to moderate it or roll out [the reforms against Bezeq] over a longer period,” Netanyahu told Filber, according to Filber’s statements to police.
“I also understand that the Bezeq-Yes merger needs to be completed” to keep Elovitch happy, Netanyahu told Filber.
The police asked Filber, “What did you understand from this?”
“That there was the situation with Bezeq-Yes that it needed to be handled and completed,” Filber responded. “You don’t need to ask him by when – because I knew this was my job. I knew the situation already or parts of it, and anything I did not know I would learn it, and I understood that there was a kind of deadline. I understood that I was obligated to do it.”
Filber added that after his meeting with Netanyahu, Tzafrir sent him a message, asking, “Is there going to be an approval soon [for the merger]? [I’m right that] you’ll approve it? Find a way to approve it.”
In all of this, Netanyahu made clear to Filber that he wanted to help Elovitch.
Over June 13 and 14, 2015, Filber will testify, he met with Bezeq official Eli Kamir and then Elovitch to nail down the details about how to get the merger approved at a blitzkrieg pace by June 23, 2015.
June 23, 2015, was crucial for Elovitch, as without the merger approval he would have had
major financing issues with various banks.
This all stemmed from the merger being approved by the relevant company boards involved on March 24, 2015, including their giving Elovitch 90 days to get Communications Ministry approval without the major conditions Berger had wanted.
Netanyahu has said the actions Filber undertook were done of his own accord, and that he was blaming the prime minister to save himself from prosecution.
“Not only were all the decisions on Bezeq and Yes approved by dozens of regulators and professionals who were not subordinate to Filber or Netanyahu, but it was under communications minister Netanyahu that reforms took place that made Elovitch and Bezeq lose billions of shekels, crashed Bezeq’s stock and saved citizens of Israel billions,” Netanyahu’s representatives have responded to the above allegations.
The truth is that Netanyahu’s lawyers will be able to attack Filber for years of public tweets and other statements he made defending all of the decisions he made which helped Elovitch.
For half a year, since July 2017, Filber had denied wrongdoing and remained loyal to the prime minister. Even in November 2017, when it was announced that Filber would be indicted, with no charges against Netanyahu, he did not crack.
In portions of Filber’s testimony made to police right before he turned against Netanyahu, leaked to Israel Hayom, Filber accused the police of “a million man race” to bring down Netanyahu by grabbing at anyone who was close to him.
Filber told the police that they would never have bothered with him if they were not trying to bring down the prime minister at all costs.
His message was that he and Netanyahu had done nothing wrong, and that they were trying to blackmail him into unjustifiably turning on Netanyahu.
In this narrative, the police used any and all means, even possibly illegal, to pressure confidants of Netanyahu to manufacture crimes that the prime minister did not commit.
But there is another narrative.
At the time that Filber turned state’s witness, it was leaked that what turned him was listening to recordings of Yeshua speaking to Elovitch about the scheme to skew coverage positively in the prime minister’s favor. This again shows the power of Yeshua’s testimony on Monday.
The Justice Ministry has never clarified why Filber was converted.
Was it because he learned for the first time how wide the media bribery scheme was, or did the recordings convince him that Netanyahu was going down anyway, and that all that loyalty would get him at this point was a jail cell next to his former boss?
Either way, Filber decided in February 2018 to turn state’s witness.
Filber told police right after turning state’s witness that it was as if a cloud had been lifted from him and that he could finally think straight and be true to his conscience for the first time in years.
He said he executed Netanyahu’s policy changes in favor of Elovitch which he knew were a “national disaster,” but that he went along, was caught up in the glory of his new title and power.
Filber, along with other communications officials, will testify that any reforms happened in spite of Netanyahu, and not because of him.
His turning state’s witness also led to Hefetz turning against Netanyahu.
The role of Nir Hefetz
However, Hefetz may be the prosecution’s weakest link.
He is known as fast and loose in the way he communicates.
Netanyahu’s defense lawyers have said they will have a field day questioning him with multiple inconsistent stories he told the police even once he was a state’s witness.
Also, part of what turned Hefetz against Netanyahu was implied threats from the police to expose a romantic connection he had with a third-party woman who was not his wife and whose name is under gag order.
Netanyahu’s defense lawyers have made it clear they will say this was highly improper coercion which should reduce the credibility of his testimony.
However, the prosecution has countered that it has text messages, other witnesses and other documents to confirm the broad parameters of Hefetz’s accusations against Netanyahu.
At a later point, Ambassador to the US and UN and senior Likud official Gilad Erdan is expected to testify in ways that will hurt Netanyahu’s narratives regarding communications policy and reforms.
Erdan had pressed for reforms while communications minister which Netanyahu later abandoned or reduced to assist Elovitch.
All of the above is the heart of Case 4000 and the greatest threat to Netanyahu.
The prosecution’s hope is that by the time it has called all of the Case 4000 witnesses, the judges will already be convinced that the prime minister is guilty of bribery.
Case 2000
Given Case 4000, the prosecution hopes it will be easier to convince the court that Netanyahu also attempted media bribery in Case 2000 at an earlier date.
This is the prosecution strategy because Case 2000, in which Netanyahu allegedly was a part of an attempted bribery scheme to help Yediot Aharonot
at the expense of Israel Hayom
in exchange for more positive coverage from Yediot, is damaged goods from the outset.
Mandelblit overruled thenstate attorney Shai Nitzan and Netanyahu prosecution team lead lawyer Ben-Ari in seeking only an indictment for breach of trust as opposed to bribery.
Paradoxically, Mandelblit charged Yediot owner Arnon “Nuni” Mozes for attempting to bribe Netanyahu.
How do you charge someone with offering bribery, but not someone with receiving it? It happens, but it is messy. This is especially true when, unlike Case 4000, the Case 2000 deal never happened.
To date, courts still have extreme difficulty with defining what breach of trust is.
Is it engaging in actions that violate conflict of interest principles? hiding actions from authorities? failing to stop illegal actions?
Once Mandelblit dropped the bribery charge, he hinted to the court and the defense that the case has holes.
The prosecution’s case here largely rests on the shock value of the recordings it has of Netanyahu discussing the alleged media bribery scheme with Mozes.
On December 4, 2014, Netanyahu met with Mozes, who offered the prime minister positive media coverage and to attack Netanyahu rivals Naftali Bennett and Moshe Kahlon with “all of my efforts.”
This followed earlier similar meetings of Netanyahu and Mozes in 2008-2009 and 2013.
The prosecution will say that in the 2014 meeting, Netanyahu broke the law when he responded by describing to Mozes how he would pass the law to weaken Israel Hayom and empower Mozes.
Also, after the fifth of six meetings with Mozes, Netanyahu met with Israel Hayom
owner Sheldon Adelson and asked for his help to carry out what he had promised to Mozes.
There is another weak point here for the prosecution.
Adelson’s statements to police were said to be a potential body blow for Netanyahu when they came out. A huge fan of Netanyahu, he had no incentive to lie to hurt the prime minister.
But Adelson died on January 11. This means he will never testify and will never be cross-examined.
In the trials of former prime minister Ehud Olmert, part of the defense’s effective attack which reduced large portions of jail time was the fact that a key witness for the prosecution, Shmuel Duchner, died before they could cross-examine him. Accordingly, the defense said that much of his testimony needed to be disqualified. It simply was unfair to convict Olmert on the basis of a witness who was never cross-examined.
The prosecution might be able to overcome this, but along with the many other above question marks, it may doom Case 2000 at trial, unless the court is already roped in against Netanyahu by Case 4000.
Case 1000
Case 1000, the Illegal Gifts Affair, does not have as many holes as Case 2000, which Mandelblit almost closed completely, but it has plenty of issues that make it borderline at trial.
Like Case 2000, the indictment is based on the vague and hard to define breach of trust charge.
Netanyahu allegedly received from billionaire Milchan NIS 267,254 in cigars, NIS 184,448 worth of champagne and NIS 10,900 in jewelry for Sara from 2011 to 2016.
He and his family also received another NIS 229,174 in champagne and cigars from Milchan associate, billionaire Packer, between 2014 and 2016.
The defense and the court will ask, if there was not enough quid pro quo on Netanyahu’s end for a bribery charge, like Nitzan and Ben-Ari wanted, why is there enough for a breach of trust charge?
Also, if billionaire Milchan was not charged for giving Netanyahu gifts, why should the prime minister be charged?
There are big questions about how Milchan will testify.
The prosecution may even bring his testimony much earlier, out of concern about reports that Netanyahu’s lawyer Ben Zur and the prime minister himself have continued to speak with Milchan.
While they claim that their contact has not related to the trial, the prosecution threatened Ben Zur with disciplinary charges for the problematic contact.
The big question will be whether the court sees all of the actions Netanyahu took for Milchan as separate and distinct acts, none of which came to fruition, or as part of a damning pattern.
Milchan’s assistant Hadas Kline will testify that Netanyahu knew about all of the allegedly illegal gifts, including gifts to Sara, which he has denied.
The gifts to Sara are critical because Sara allegedly harassed Milchan and Kline for them – which hurts the defense that they were given voluntarily.
According to the indictment, in 2010 Netanyahu summoned IDF Maj.-Gen. Eitan Dangot to provide Milchan with an IDF helicopter to go to Jordan for business.
Netanyahu’s lawyers have told The Jerusalem Post that this was for businessman Ratan Tata to advance deals with Jordan, not for Milchan.
But the prosecution will bring testimony that Netanyahu also met with Milchan’s accountant Zeev Feldman to ensure that the business plans were to benefit Milchan.
Filber will testify in Case 1000 as well.
He will testify that Netanyahu summoned him late at night as a middleman also to advance Milchan’s interests in investing in the Keshet channel.
Milchan made explicit requests of Netanyahu for assistance with such issues starting from 2009.
There is testimony from then-finance minister Yair Lapid about Netanyahu improperly trying to get him to give Milchan a massive tax exemption during two meetings in late 2013.
Further, the indictment said that Milchan and Kline appealed to Netanyahu repeatedly in December 2013 and in 2014 to help him get a long US visa extension.
Netanyahu initially got a short extension for Milchan through then-US ambassador Dan Shapiro.
When this short extension was not enough, Netanyahu obtained a longer extension by speaking to then-US secretary of state John Kerry.
Filber will testify that Netanyahu also told him in 2015 to help Milchan with regulatory issues relating to a potential merger between the Reshet and Keshet networks which would help Milchan.
How much will Milchan and former Netanyahu chief of staff turned state’s witness for Cases 1000 and 2000 Ari Harow try to help the prosecution, if at all, to nail Netanyahu?
Harow, who worked for Netanyahu in official capacities in 2008-2009 and 2014-2015 as well as in Likud fundraising in earlier years, has avoided pointing a finger directly at the prime minister the way Hefetz and Filber did, instead providing general details.
How will Sara, who has had trouble as a witness, hold up in court?
The number of questions and the lack of smoking gun evidence or a smoking gun witness as in Case 4000 are what make the result in this case so unclear.
THE TESTIMONY of Yeshua on Monday will start to clarify the picture of whether Netanyahu will be convicted, whether his career will end, and whether he will go to jail.
Case 2000 may fall apart, Case 1000 is a coin toss, and even if there are convictions in those cases, there may be no jail time.
But Case 4000, the story Yeshua will start telling, could put the prime minister behind bars for multiple years.
Starting on Monday, Netanyahu will not be able to control the narrative via Facebook, but will need to contend with hundreds of witnesses airing his dirty laundry in public. •