Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fumed at the prosecution for his ongoing corruption trial as the Israeli leader’s testimony resumed on Monday after over a week recess.“You’ve been dragging me through hell for eight years with your nonsense,” Netanyahu said, according to his defense team. “The rage is not fake; the anger is not fake. It’s being talked about all over the world, including [by] senior Washington officials with whom I met. They ask me, ‘Is this why they are putting the entire government on trial?’”The prime minister said despite the media bribery scheme theory of the prosecution and hundreds of news articles on the subject, there was no evidence of policies to benefit Bezeq owner Shaul Elovitch in exchange for positive coverage from the news outlet he then owned, Walla.
Netanyahu said the prosecution was presenting standard communications and relationships between politicians and the media as unusual and was misrepresenting news coverage as positive.According to the prosecution and testimony by former Communications Ministry director-general Avi Berger, the prime minister fired the witness in part for promoting telecommunications industry reforms that would have been damaging to Bezeq. However, Netanyahu said on Monday that he let then-interior minister Gilad Erdan advance regulations that would have been detrimental to Bezeq.
In recovery
The prime minister’s testimony came almost a week-and-a-half after the previous hearing, with a single hearing between another month-long recess. Two hearings were canceled due to the illness of one of the judges, and last week’s testimony was delayed due to Netanyahu’s trip to Washington.According to Maariv, the prime minister said at the beginning of the Monday hearing that he was still recovering from a post-surgery infection. While he said that he achieved a great deal during his visit to the United States, it was a trying period. He was still reportedly on a serious antibiotics regimen and had to take frequent breaks.Breaks were held during the testimony to allow the prime minister to respond to urgent government messages. The hearing also ended an hour early to allow Netanyahu to address the Knesset.Yonah Jeremy Bob contributed to this report.