Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s testimony at his corruption trial may shift to two hearings per week due to the demands of his leadership position, following a request by the defense in a closed-door deliberation at the end of Monday’s session.
The court gave defense attorney Amit Hadad until Thursday to file a proposed format for holding testimonies twice a week, with one day of presentations by the defense. In December, the defense reiterated the court’s rejection of such a request in light of the complex security and political situations that had resulted in so far not having three full days of hearings in a week.
Tuesday’s testimony was canceled after a closed deliberation at the end of Monday’s. The request was over security needs, and it came after a recess on Monday for Netanyahu to engage in urgent security consultations that coincided with the killing of a Hamas official in Lebanon.
Before the hearing was canceled, the courtroom bore witness to heated confrontations between the prosecution and defense about the disclosure of requests to the judges. The prosecution was angered about the defense’s requests, claiming that the defense was not sharing the requests with the state.
Hadad challenged the prosecution for not notifying the defense ahead of time about their Sunday filing regarding wrongly attributed social-media posts used as supporting evidence regarding ex-Walla CEO Avi Akalai’s animosity toward Netanyahu.
Last week, Hadad presented a series of X/Twitter posts harshly criticizing and insulting Netanyahu by an account with the same name as Alkalai to demonstrate the Walla editor’s disdain for Netanyahu and to discredit the idea that Walla was part of a media bribery scheme to provide him with positive coverage.
On Sunday, the prosecution requested that the court strike the posts as evidence, because the account belonged to a man with the same name as the witness but was someone else. The prosecution verified with Alkalai that he did not control the account and presented several examples of the account, confirming to other application users that it did not belong to the Walla editor.
On Monday, the defense said the prosecution could have addressed the issue at the hearing but chose to appeal to the media rather than the court.
Hadad said the point about Alkalai’s animosity toward Netanyahu was evident regardless of the validity of the account. According to text message logs, Alkalai allegedly called Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, “disgusting dogs” and described him as a North Korean dictator.
The judges said the matter would be ruled on later, although arguments broke out several times on the subject.Showcasing the animosity of Alkalai and other Walla staff toward Netanyahu was the prevailing narrative of the defense’s exhibition on Monday to discredit the alleged link to positive coverage.
The cavalcade of negative Walla articles about Netanyahu with similar commentary from the defendant wore the judges down. The repetitive review of indictment items had been the subject of deliberation in the past, with judges proposing to group the 315 indictment items by subject or issue. On Monday morning, however, the judges insisted that Hadad group the exhibits.
Hadad, who presented each of the 315 items individually over the course of the hearings, said he would not gamble with the life of the prime minister.
“We’ve gotten to the situation that the indictment is fundamentally falling apart,” Hadad said.
Netanyahu requested to directly address the court. Even though his request was initially refused, he later said: “The bribery that I am accused of has 315 bricks that are the basis of bribery. This is what they have been harassing me [about] – and the entire country – for years. It is my right to self-defense, to give truthful testimony, to ask me the most pointed questions. The prosecutor’s office refuses to remove the items, so I stand by my right to answer every single charge and to smash every single brick.”
Attempt to undermine the prosecution's theory
On Monday, Hadad attempted to undermine the prosecution’s theory about the exceptional relationship between Walla and Netanyahu by demonstrating its negative coverage.
Netanyahu said while he knew that co-defendant and former Walla owner Shaul Elovitch liked him, the mogul did not have much input into Walla’s content. Elovitch did not influence Walla’s coverage, and then-editor-in-chief Alkalai, along with the rest of the staff, hated him, he said.
With the parade of exhibits of negative coverage of the prime minister on Walla, Netanyahu said it was ridiculous to claim that he was getting positive coverage as the result of a media bribery scheme.
“Evidently ridiculous,” he said in English.
President Isaac Herzog, who at the time was chairman of the Zionist Union party, was given supportive headlines and flattering accompanying photographs, Netanyahu said, adding that he received the opposite.
If there was a media bribery scheme with Elovitch, Netanyahu said, he would not have allowed negative articles about him during the vital preelection period.
“It’s not just the money time; it’s the only time,” as far as Elovitch would be concerned if there was an agreement, Netanyahu said, partially in English.
Hadad highlighted what he said was one of the few direct communications between Netanyahu and Elovitch. This exchange came in response to Walla’s preelection coverage of the Victory 2015 nonprofit affair.
Hadad demonstrated that the Walla coverage was skeptical of the Likud’s claim that foreign nonprofits were interfering with the elections, questioning if it was a right-wing “panic.”
Netanyahu said he thought it was important to speak about the matter and attacked Walla as a “Pravda” that had lied about him. He said he was not asking for equality in reporting but wanted to know how it was possible that such a website had an agreement and unusual relationship with him.
Foreign interference in Israeli politics was an issue that continues, Netanyahu said, adding that the V15 law restricts foreign political donations. These took place not just in 2015 but also during the 1999 nonprofit affair, during which foreign funding allegedly led to tilting the election in favor of former prime minister Ehud Barak, who won, he said.
The defense provided more instances when alleged coverage demands by Netanyahu were either not unusual or not actually requested by him.
Haddad demonstrated that the indictment against Netanyahu contained an item that was a general response to news outlets and not specific to Walla. A message sent to Walla staff members and included in the indictment as a demand was repeated in a Haaretz article, he said. This demonstrated that there was not an exceptional relationship in this case, he added.
Netanyahu said he was not aware or involved in the circulation of the press statement.
“This is corruption?” he asked.
Netanyahu indicated that some of the indictment items were based on requests to Walla made by family members without his knowledge. Zeev Rubinstein, who allegedly was a middleman in the media bribery scheme, asked Walla CEO Ilan Yeshua to move an article about Netanyahu to a lower position on the news site and change the picture.
Correspondence between Yeshua and Elovitch indicated that they believed the request had come from Netanyahu’s son.