Netanyahu testimony day two: Don’t accuse me when others said they acted on my behalf
PM argues that his wife, middleman tried to influence Walla on their own.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s second day of testimony resumed on Wednesday at 2:30 p.m. and went on until almost 8:00 p.m., though he left the courtroom for two brief recesses following receiving two private notes that allegedly related to national security concerns.
He continued testifying in a Tel Aviv underground courtroom for security reasons, though the case continues to be presided over by three judges from the Jerusalem District Court, where most of the nearly five-year trial has taken place until now.
At the end of the hearing, Netanyahu asked to address the court directly behind closed doors.
The prosecution objected, and they and the defense legal team agreed to continue a negotiation over the issue going forward.
It was unclear if the prosecution might consent to such a request if there were conditions, such as keeping a transcript and precommitments limiting the substance of what Netanyahu could say.
For example, the prosecution or the judges could be concerned about him bringing undue pressure on them beyond what an average citizen can convey.
Activities undertaken by other people
During the hearing, Netanyahu turned to a repeated theme: that the prosecution was accusing him of activities undertaken by other people, who may have claimed to speak for him but without his knowledge.He applied this to both his wife, Sara, and to a middleman, Zeev Rubinstein, both of who made requests to various officials connected to the Walla media outlet to try to make the coverage more pro-Netanyahu.In the indictment, the prosecution cited written messages from Rubinstein in which he says to Walla officials, “they asked” to prove that both Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, were involved.However, Netanyahu said he did not know about almost all of the requests, leaving himself room to make a limited tactical legal retreat that he might have known about a small number of requests.Presumably, he left this open as a possibility regarding a few specific instances where the prosecution has more direct evidence of his involvement.But if Netanyahu can invalidate the vast majority of the 315 instances of claimed media bribery requests to Walla, it would pull out the rug from under the prosecution’s case.Likewise, Netanyahu made the same claim for requests that Sara made to Walla-connected officials.He added that often Rubinstein and Sara appealed to officials other than Shaul Elovitch himself – whose being owner of Walla and Bezeq has put him at the center of the Case 4000 media bribery charges – and said that if he, Netanyahu, had wanted to influence something, he would have appealed directly to Elovitch.Further, he downplayed how close he was to Elovitch, saying there were only a few instances where they spoke about Walla media issues, whereas he called Sheldon Adelson, owner of Israel Hayom, dozens of times.He downplayed the value of Walla’s influence, saying it was not a major player and he would never have spent large amounts of time trying to influence the site.Also, Netanyahu went into greater detail to frame a dinner he held on December 27, 2012, as involving friendship and perfectly legal discussions related to the media as opposed to the prosecution’s portrayal of the dinner as a key point in the hatching of a media bribery scheme.He and his wife, Sara, conducted the dinner with Iris and Shaul Elovitch.The prime minister said that during the dinner, “we got to know each other. We had met previously among dozens of business people. This was the first time I sat across from him with his wife and my wife.“On a personal level, we talked about family and children – that’s one clear topic. The other topic, which, of course, interested me greatly, was his business ventures in Japan, and I asked him many questions about it.”At most, Netanyahu said he tried to convince Elovitch to reframe Walla as a more right-wing website, including firing and replacing top editors.But he denied that they discussed anything related to Bezeq or financially benefiting Elovitch in any way should he heed Netanyahu’s requests to move Walla ideologically more to the right.Moreover, he said that he was only interested in transforming Walla into a right-wing website at a general level and not in interfering in individual articles as alleged in the indictment.Netanyahu ridiculed the idea that he cared about how photos presented his wife, Sara, while saying he could understand why she, independently, might have acted to influence those portrayals.While testifying, Netanyahu criticized media coverage of Sara, with Hebrew media quoting the prime minister as saying, “They created a media persona for Sara that is the opposite of who she really is.”“It’s painful, but in my eyes, she is a great hero. She tries every day to make the public aware of her real actions and to refute the lies against her. Sara has become a punching bag; to harm me, they target my wife and children.”Also, he said, “Yesterday, we posted a video of me signing forms, and a claim was made: Is this how forms are signed so carelessly? But it’s important to understand that the forms reach me after all the reviews and opinions, sometimes after processes that take years when everything has already been thoroughly examined and decided.”
Netanyahu's Tuesday testimony
On Tuesday, on the first day of his trial focusing on Case 4000, Netanyahu said that this was a “chance to refute these ridiculous charges” against him.
"I waited eight years for this,” he said, "to say the truth as I remember." He called the charges "an ocean of absurdity."
Netanyahu criticized the timing of the trial while Israel is at war: "I am the prime minister, and I am managing a country and the IDF during a war." He said that he "thought the court could have balanced [his] time better than [making him] testify three times per week."
Netanyahu is the first sitting prime minister in Israeli history to testify in a public corruption trial.
What are the cases against Netanyahu?
Case 4000
Case 4000 was originally the most threatening case with the most serious charge – bribery – but it has faced lots of problems. Nir Hefetz assisted the prosecution and remained more solid than expected under cross-examination, while Shlomo Filber upset the prosecution so much that they declared him a hostile witness, ended his immunity deal, and likely plan to prosecute him in the future.Hefetz provided the prosecution’s narrative regarding allegations against Netanyahu on the Walla side of the case: that the prime minister used Elovitch and former Walla CEO Ilan Yeshua to manipulate coverage of him and his political rivals in around 300 instances.The defense managed to challenge some of the instances and show that Netanyahu’s rivals sometimes also played games manipulating coverage of themselves, but if the court accepts even a majority of the instances, the volume of coverage manipulation by the prime minister would drown out what his rivals have managed to achieve.Filber was supposed to close the circle by providing the prosecution narrative against Netanyahu on the Bezeq side, namely that he allegedly used his powers over communications policies to benefit the communications company to the tune of hundreds of millions of shekels – or more.Given that Elovitch owned both Bezeq and Walla, Netanyahu would have been benefiting Elovitch’s right hand so that he could essentially benefit Netanyahu with his left hand.Likewise, Netanyahu will argue in Case 4000 that trying to influence media coverage at Walla to be less biased against oneself is standard for nearly all politicians and that any policy moves made in favor of Bezeq were the right policies or that he did not know about all of the actions taken by his subordinates on the issue.He will have to contend with Hefetz’s testimony contradicting his narrative as well as parts of Filber’s testimony and others contradicting it.
Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.
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