Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned on Tuesday to his claim that his relationship with businessman Arnon Milchan was a genuine friendship rather than an improper exchange of favors, as the final re-examination phase of his testimony continued at the Tel Aviv District Court.
Netanyahu later broadened his attack on the proceedings, describing the case as “one huge entrapment, one huge witch hunt.”
His attorney, Amit Hadad, is conducting the limited re-examination stage following the prosecution’s completion last week of its cross-examination of Netanyahu. The purpose of re-examination is to clarify points raised in cross-examination, rather than reopen the evidence more broadly.
That limitation shaped much of Tuesday’s hearing. The judges blocked several of Hadad’s questions after prosecutors argued that Netanyahu had already given clear answers during cross-examination.
Hadad focused on Case 1000, the so-called gifts affair, in which Netanyahu is charged with fraud and breach of trust. Prosecutors allege that Netanyahu received expensive gifts, including cigars and champagne worth hundreds of thousands of shekels, from Milchan and Australian businessman James Packer while acting in matters connected to Milchan’s interests.
Netanyahu maintains it was a genuine friendship
The defense has long maintained that the relationship was personal and predated any alleged official benefit.
Hadad showed Netanyahu photographs from social and family gatherings with Milchan, including images from around 2000, when Netanyahu was out of office. Netanyahu described them as proof of close ties between the two families that developed when he did not expect to return to politics.
“They eulogized me at the time and saw me as a political corpse,” Netanyahu said of the period following his first term as prime minister. “And I saw myself that way too.”
The exchange went to a central prosecution argument in Case 1000: that Netanyahu had not truly left political life and that Milchan’s access to him therefore retained value. Hadad sought to counter that the friendship continued during periods in which Netanyahu was a private citizen, without an apparent political interest at stake.
The court also limited Hadad’s attempts to revisit questions about Milchan’s alleged access to Netanyahu during meetings and about a US visa sought by Milchan. Prosecutors said the prime minister had already addressed those points during cross-examination, and the bench largely accepted that position.
At one point, Hadad complained that the defense was being prevented from correcting what he called a misleading picture created by the prosecution.
Presiding Judge Rivka Friedman-Feldman responded that Netanyahu had ultimately answered the questions and that the defense’s objections during cross-examination had been placed on the record.
Netanyahu: 'I dedicate my life to the State of Israel'
Later in the hearing, he said, “I dedicate my life to the State of Israel,” he said, adding that he had believed in and defended the legal system when first questioned by police around a decade ago, but had not imagined that investigators would “brazenly lie to a prime minister.”
He accused investigators of trying to construct a “fictitious reality” in order to remove him from office. The judges repeatedly sought to direct him back to the question before him.
Likud MK Tally Gotliv and Otzma Yehudit MK Almog Cohen attended part of the hearing.
Once Hadad completes re-examination in the remaining cases, Netanyahu’s own testimony is expected to conclude, although the wider defense case will continue.