The indictment accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of issuing demands for positive Walla articles as part of a media bribery scheme included at least eight general press releases as supporting documents for a supposed usual relationship between the politicians and outlet, defense attorney Amit Hadad demonstrated at Tuesday’s corruption trial testimony.
The press releases were listed in the Case 4000 indictment as demands from Netanyahu, but Hadad presented communications logs and similar articles published on outlets other than Walla.
One press statement was covered nearly identically by Walla and Maariv, while another wasn’t covered by Walla and was written about by outlets, such as Israel Hayom.
Netanyahu said the prosecution didn’t know the difference between him and a spokesperson and that he was not involved in the issuance of general press statements.
“Every time, they say I was involved,” said Netanyahu. “How was I involved?” he asked.
The inclusion of general press statements as a demand for unusual treatment was a lie, said Netanyahu, and each lie was a brick in the false indictment.
Hadad hammered the prosecution for bringing such a document to court, after which the judges asked if the prosecution wished to remove these items.
“You didn’t put in a bit of work into this indictment,” Hadad charged. “There are basic errors here.”
Other items included as demands were more personalized press statements by a spokesperson or by ex-Netanyahu aide-turned-witness Nir Hefetz. One such request listed in the indictment didn’t appear to manifest in an article that reached the Walla homepage, but was present on the main page of other outlets.
One message that Netanyahu said was a “standard press statement” from Hefetz to ex-Walla CEO Ilan Yeshua resulted in an exchange between ex-editor-in-chief Avi Alkilai in which they discussed a story about North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
The press release resulted in an article, but it also appeared in other outlets. Another press statement about Sara Netanyahu lighting Hanukkah candles with Holocaust survivors saw internal Walla communications in which the outlet resolved to remove the focus from Sara.
Other outlets did not decentralize Sara; the Walla article was allegedly uploaded and taken down from the Walla homepage in the late hours of the night.
Netanyahu said Walla rarely reached out to him and that 2015 election rival Isaac Herzog didn’t need to submit stories, as the outlet supposedly reached out to him instead. Hadad argued, using one video about the two politicians, that it was more beneficial to Herzog and didn’t present Netanyahu’s narrative.
In another attempt to draw a Walla double standard against Netanyahu, Hadad highlighted the network’s coverage of a 2015 then-Channel 2 interview with Herzog.
Netanyahu recalled the interview, which occurred three days before the election, calling it an ambush because the two politicians were supposed to be interviewed separately, but in the end, the channel merged the interviews.
Hadad highlighted how Yeshua and Alkalai positively received the interview and how Walla covered the item to Herzog’s benefit.
The defense presented to the court a Walla correction of Herzog’s verbal gaffes – but that when Netanyahu made similar mistakes, they were highlighted by the outlet.
“I built the Har Homa neighborhood in 1977 – sorry, 1997,” Netanyahu said in 2015, correcting himself mid-sentence. Walla presented Netanyahu’s mistake in the headline, despite him correcting himself.
Catching the attention of judges
While the press releases caught the judges' attention, they seemed skeptical about the need to continue the review of materials related to a 2015 Walla interview and other items of news coverage, arguing that the Israeli leader was repeating himself and offering no new commentary.
At the outset of the fifteenth hearing, the defense and prosecution proposed cancelling two months of Tuesday hearings in response to the prosecution's concerns about having another witness take the stand between the Israeli leader's weekly Monday and Wednesday testimonies.
Following a Thursday ruling by the Jerusalem District Court changing the weekly docket from three to two days a week, with the Tuesday hearing devoted to one of eight defense witnesses, the prosecution had argued on Sunday that it was concerned that there would be witness contamination. The prosecution warned that the testimonies of Netanyahu and other defense witnesses could influence one another.
During a lunch break, the judges ruled that they had rejected the request, as well as a request to cancel a Wednesday witness testimony because the person was unavailable that day.
Netanyahu received two envelopes and had to make urgent security-related calls during the hearing, both of which coincided with the elimination of Hezbollah and Hamas officials on Tuesday.
The next Netanyahu testimony is set to be held on Monday, with a total of ten hearings remaining.