The State Attorney's Office sought to influence elections by leaking allegations of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's corruption cases, the Israeli leader alleged at a Monday testimony at the Tel Aviv District Court house, explaining that the move and cases were part of a broader campaign against him.
Netanyahu's allegation followed defense attorney Amit Hadad’s presentation of an N12 report from just before the 2019 elections. The report cited a source claiming that in 2015, Communications Ministry director Shlomo Filber and Bezeq owner Shaul Elovitch held a meeting.
They allegedly discussed canceling anti-monopoly measures and advancing the Bezeq-Yes merger.
The report alleged that Filber had updated Netanyahu throughout the meeting and that everything had been conducted with the prime minister's approval.
Netanyahu said that the report was a lie and that the anti-monopoly measures had finished being implemented three months prior. There was no discussion of the Bezeq-Yes merger, according to Netanyahu, which he repeatedly said throughout the testimony did not interest him.
The leak's proximity to the election led the prime minister to charge that 99% of the State Attorney's office was against him and had leaked "a lie upon a lie upon a lie" in order to impact the election. Netanyahu claimed that there had been hundreds of leaks to news outlets about the cases against him as part of collusion between the media and the State Attorney's Office to set him up.
The prosecution objected to the allegations, calling defense attorney Amit Haddad a "chutzpan" for his line of questioning.
Judge Rivka Friedman-Feldman expressed impatience over the allegations and disagreement, noting that such allegations had been leveled before, and urged Haddad to continue his examination of Netanyahu.
The comments came as Netanyahu's government had initiated measures to dismiss the attorney-general from her position. Outside politics were not far from the courtroom even before the hearing began, with protesters gathering outside to demonstrate against the Israeli leader's office's alleged relationship with Qatar and his Sunday move to dismiss Shin Bet head, Ronen Bar.
Netanyahu accused the prosecution and investigators of ignoring evidence against their theory as Hadad walked the prime minister and judges through regulatory matters pertaining to Case 4000, which orbits around a supposed 2015 media bribery scheme in which Netanyahu is accused of advancing policies beneficial to Elovitch in return for positive news coverage on his then-outlet Walla.
Netanyahu's response
Netanyahu dismissed allegations that he had issued directives to Filber to help Elovitch in December 2015, contending that the meetings were not about Bezeq but the slow advancement of telecommunications market reforms.
"Bezeq didn't interest me. What interested me was governance," said Netanyahu.
Filber had previously testified that Netanyahu warned him that if he had worked in the private sector, the aide would have been fired by now. Netanyahu defended his remarks as being a response to slow work in an essential government matter.
Netanyahu also denied the indictment's allegations that a 2016 follow-up call to Filber was to further push the Bezeq directives and that the investigators had not asked the prime minister about it or presented him with Filber's account of events during interrogations.
The subject of the conversation was a Globes article on anti-monopoly measures and the progress of a conflict of interest agreement regarding Elovitch, which the prime minister noted he had acquiesced to.
Netanyahu slammed investigators, alleging they knew the truth about the meetings and were ignoring vital information in order to fabricate a case against him.
"There are two things here: Concealing the truth and when the truth is revealed -- ignoring the truth," said Netanyahu.
Another element that Netanyahu said investigators had ignored because it didn't support their theory was that Bezeq had done worse financially under Filber than his predecessor. While the prosecution's theory was that former Communications Ministry director Avi Berger had been fired because he was not working to the benefit of advancing policies in line with the alleged bribery scheme, under Berger Bezeq, he had performed better.
"It's completely the reverse," said Netanyahu.
The eighteenth testimony hearing started and ended early, and this was not the only scheduling issue faced on Monday. Due to Knesset votes, the Wednesday hearing was moved to Tuesday.