After signficant opposition: Court holds closed-door session held at Netanyahu trial

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Tuesday corruption trial testimony was canceled following Monday’s closed-door session.

A closed-door session was held on Monday to discuss state security matters and their impact on the scheduling of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's corruption trial testimony hearings.

The prosecution had accepted the session after significant opposition in the morning.

Judge Rivka Friedman-Feldman entered the courtroom alone to adjourn the hearing, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had still not returned from his business and there was only ten minutes before a closed session.
 
 
 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had to urgently leave the courtroom to address an unknown matter. 

At Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Monday corruption trial testimony, Judge Moshe Bar-Am expressed reservations about the detail and access to Walla articles listed in the indictment as examples of unusual positive coverage for the Israeli leader.

In review of one of the indictment items that described a series of positive articles on a particular day, defense Attorney Amit Hadad explained to Bar-Am that his team had to investigate and cross-reference to determine what articles were being discussed -- the indictment did not list the exact articles.

The defense argued that the prosecution did not have an index or list of links to make it simple to access articles being discussed in the indictment, creating a significant research burden on the defense. 

At Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Monday corruption trial, defense attorney Amit Hadad continued to attack items in the indictment, indicating that Walla provided unusual positive news coverage for the Israeli leader.

Hadad highlighted that one alleged 2015 article title change requested by Iris Elovitch, wife of ex-Walla owner Shaul Elovitch, occurred the same day that a series of negative articles about the prime minister were published by the outlet. In contrast, Hadad argued that the positive article was only in a place of prominence on the website for several minutes.

At his Monday corruption trial testimony, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the State Attorney's Office of negligence for alleging he was involved in a media bribery scheme ostensibly without reviewing the standards for news coverage.

While the prosecution's theory was that Netanyahu was receiving unusually positive coverage from Walla in 2015 in return for the advancement of policies benefiting its owner, the prime minister argued that compared to other news sites, he was getting more negative coverage than normal.

If the prosecution hadn't checked the standard of how he'd been covered on other sites, Netanyahu said they had been "coming with extreme carelessness. I hope it's just carelessness."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Monday corruption trial began with a fierce debate over a request for a closed-door session at noon to discuss the scheduling of the hearings and their conflict with the Israeli leader's responsibility to developing state security situations.  

After an unsuccessful series of exchanges between defense attorney Amit Hadad and the judges about the details and ambiguousness of the defense's Monday morning filing, Netanyahu stood to explain that the security situation had changed since their last Wednesday closed-door session, and state secrets prevented all the details of their request publicly. The filing couldn't detail the reason for the request because of the security sensitivity.

"I think this is serious enough that it requires the hearing," said Netanyahu.

The prime minister argued that the current paradigm between the hearings and responsibilities to state duties were out of balance. There were thirty hours a week during a "historic" period in which the prime minister was not operational. Discussions of messages from [alleged media bribery scheme middleman Zeev] Rubinstein from a decade ago while facing a historic conflict was not balanced, said an animated Netanyahu. The right balance needed to be found in relation to the current security situation.

Judge Rivka Friedman-Feldman challenged why Defense Minister Israel Katz was requested to join, questioning what the defense minister would know that the prime minister wouldn't. The minister was not a security professional, but a politician, she said. Hadad said that he was ready to bring any other security official, but the minister was indeed a professional who would be able to elucidate on the current situation.

Hadad had also said that they had been unable to relate certain information and didn't know which information could be shared with which people in the defense and prosecution. The judges said that this should have been decided beforehand by consulting with the intelligence advisors. The judges advised that the defense contact the relevant officials for consultation, giving them a recess of several minutes to prepare. 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's corruption trial testimony will not extend more than 14 additional hearings, including Monday, the judges ruled just before the day's hearing began.

The prosecution and defense have until Tuesday to respond to the decision, which didn't touch on the prime minister's request to shorten the weekly testimonies from three hearings to twice a week.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu requested from the Jerusalem District Court that Defense Minister Israel Katz attend a closed door session at his Monday corruption trial testimony.