WhatsappAnyone with Israel’s “best interests“ at heart wouldn’t have welcomed the witch hunt against the prime minister for the “crime“ of garnering votes.
Since submitting a formal request for a pardon from Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been issuing explanations for what many of his supporters consider a disappointing move.
It didn’t come as a total surprise, of course. Toward the end of his historic address to the Knesset on Oct. 13, U.S. President Donald Trump conveyed a message to Herzog about this very issue.
“Hey, I have an idea,” Trump said, acknowledging that he was going off script. “Why don’t you give [Netanyahu] a pardon? … [I]t just seems to make so much sense. You know, whether we like it or not, this has been one of the greatest wartime [prime ministers]. … And cigars and champagne—who the hell cares about that, right?”
The following month, Trump submitted the entreaty in a letter.
“As the Great State of Israel and the amazing Jewish People move past the terribly difficult times of the last three years,” he wrote, “I hereby call on you to fully pardon Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been a formidable and decisive War Time Prime Minister and is now leading Israel into a time of peace, which includes my continued work with key Middle East leaders to add many additional countries to the world changing Abraham Accords.”
He went on to state that “Netanyahu has stood tall for Israel in the face of strong adversaries and long odds, and his attention cannot be unnecessarily diverted.”
Assuring Herzog that he respects both the independence and requirements of the Israeli judicial system, Trump nevertheless opined that the “case” [his quotation marks] against the prime minister is a “political, unjustified prosecution.”
He ended by saying, “It is time to let Bibi unite Israel by pardoning him, and ending lawfare once and for all,” using the nickname of the prime minister.
Herzog couldn’t have been caught off guard by the missive, due to Trump’s quip at the Knesset. But he was definitely put on the spot. As a result, he responded with pompous piety, claiming that his sole consideration before making his decision on the matter would be the “best interests of the State of Israel and Israeli society.”
Whatever that means.
Under the circumstances, anyone who had Israel’s “best interests” at heart wouldn’t have welcomed the witch hunt that’s been going on against Netanyahu for the “crime” of garnering votes. And though Herzog’s role is supposed to be ceremonial (other than in the power to grant pardons), the former leader of the Labor Party has been tipping the scales in favor of the “anybody but Bibi” crowd from the get-go.
Before the war, he served as a kind of self-appointed mediator between the government and the anti-judicial reform movement. You know, the one that included threats by the “Brothers and Sisters in Arms” group to refuse to show up for their reserve duty in the Israel Defense Forces. Oh, and vows by Israeli Air Force pilots not to participate in any potential operation against Iran.
Never mind that this was among the reasons that Hamas considered the timing ripe for its long-planned attacks on Oct. 7, 2023. And still, Herzog honored BSA less than a year later, bestowing on the organization the Presidential Award for Volunteerism. That was for mobilizing after the massacre that sparked the war to assist in civilian aid efforts.
Thanks a lot to the arsonists for helping pour water on the country-under-attack (excuse me, on the Netanyahu-led coalition elected by the public) that they had been so keen to set on fire—and not only figuratively. To express their rage at the very suggestion that restoring balance to the branches of government was necessary, their members literally burned tires on main roads and highways.
Despite the mass casualties and other atrocities suffered by Israeli civilians, foreigners, soldiers and hostages since that fateful Simchat Torah holiday more than two years ago, the courts and protesters have been happy to keep Netanyahu tied up in court. They figure that their favorite show must go on.
That the comedic drama involves corruption charges that neither years of police investigations nor the trial itself have been able to prove is of little concern to the prosecutors and other political oppositionists. On the contrary, by this point, after spending nearly a decade and oodles of tax shekels, there’s no way they’re going to back down from finding him guilty of some wrongdoing.
The one thing they’ve made clear all along is that he’d be off the hook if he agreed to exit the arena. It’s a case of blatant lawfare, not even in disguise.
Netanyahu has refused to make such a deal with the devil. He’s said all along that he will use the very system trying to block his ballot-box successes to exonerate himself.
What, then—other than Trump’s wishes—possessed him to shift gears and ask for a pardon? And why now, when the full extent of the illegal methods employed to pressure witnesses into manufacturing evidence against him is coming to light in horrifying detail?
Netanyahu spelled out the answer in a Dec. 3 interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin at The New York Times’s annual DealBook Summit. During the one-on-one, with Sorkin live at Manhattan’s Lincoln Center and Netanyahu via video conference from his office in Jerusalem, the Israeli premier first described what he called “six years of bogus investigations and four years of an endless trial” as follows:
“I was being put on trial … for bribery. What was the bribery? Not envelopes of cash, not any material remuneration, but supposedly positive coverage in a second-rate internet site. Well, it turned out that it was negative coverage. … So, two years ago, the judges call in the prosecution, and they say, ‘Drop the bribery charge. That’s your flagship charge. There’s nothing there.’
“Well, they wouldn’t agree. They kept on going, because they don’t want justice; they want me out of office. … So then, two charges were left. I received a Bugs Bunny doll—you’re not laughing—my son received a Bugs Bunny doll 29 years ago, and I received some cigars and champagne bottles. That’s what this trial is about.”
Sorkin interjected: “And you were at that trial today.”
Netanyahu replied: “Yes, I’m supposed to spend three times a week, eight hours a day in that trial. And, you know, I’ve got a few other things to do. … I think history beckons: We have opportunities for peace. We have enormous opportunities in AI and Quantum, [among] other things. I’ve already revolutionized the Israeli economy once—into a free-market economy. It’s become a juggernaut. And now we have the ability to seize the future, which will not only help us, but will help the entire Middle East—the world, really.”
He went on, “In our system, when you ask for a pardon, you’re not admitting to any guilt. You don’t have to. And I don’t. But I am saying that the needs of Israel are such that to spend another two to three years in this nonsense, where this trial has just collapsed, it’s become a joke. … It’s so silly and so stupid. … [It’s] absurd. So, I hope that it ends.”
Asked about the chances for Herzog to agree, Netanyahu said, I don’t know. … I hope he does, because I think it’s right for the country and it’s right for our future. We have a lot of tasks at hand. And it’s a lot easier to do them if you don’t have to spend eight hours a day, three times a week in this nonsense.”
He presented a shorter version of the above in a video message on Thursday that he shared on social media, this one with a prop—a Bugs Bunny doll—for effect. Though it was an apt and amusing tool to illustrate the farce, the bigger picture is not the least bit funny.
In any event, it’s unlikely that Herzog will grant the requested pardon without a set of strings attached. And there’s no way that Netanyahu will admit to culpability for crimes that he didn’t commit. He certainly won’t resign or agree not to run in the next election.
The issue, therefore, is moot.
