The hearing in the criminal trial of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was canceled after just one hour on Monday.
Netanyahu’s defense team had requested that Monday’s hearing be canceled in full due to what it described as diplomatic schedule clashes. The prosecution partly agreed to the request, responding that it saw reason to cancel from 11:30 a.m. onward but that questioning could take place for two hours out of the day, and this is what the judges agreed to as well.
The prime minister said in court on Monday morning, “I’m not aware of any case of a person who is required to appear three times a week.” He also announced that he would have to leave anyway at 10:30 – an hour earlier than planned – due to a diplomatic meeting. Later, the judges called the prosecution and defense in for a meeting regarding this request.
They agreed at 10:30 to cancel the hearing for the rest of the planned hour; it will resume on Tuesday. “Now that we have been exposed to the full picture, we decided to end the hearing now,” said presiding Judge Rivka Friedman-Feldman.
She added, “Had we known then what we know now, we would have canceled the hearing from the start.”
Netanyahu invited Paraguay official into court
The reason for the 10:30 clash was a scheduled visit by Raúl Latorre, the president of the Chamber of Deputies of Paraguay, the lower house of its Congress.
“Something big is happening in Latin America, and it’s embarrassing that I can’t spare 15 minutes this morning to meet with him [because of the hearing],” said the prime minister. He added that, should the hearing not be canceled, Latorre would be “forced to make his way over here [to the courthouse] for a few minutes.”
Latorre did make it to the courtroom for a few minutes before the hearing adjourned. He said, “We are here to express our full support. I admire you and think you are one of the important leaders of the free world.”
Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana arrived with Latorre, who said, “My brother here, [Ohana], told me how unfair this trial is.”
On the stand, Netanyahu also detailed another meeting, scheduled for 12:30 p.m. in Jerusalem, with Tom Barrack, the US ambassador to Turkey and envoy to Syria, on “matters relating to Syria.” He said he would have to leave at 10:30 to prepare for that meeting.
The prime minister was indicted in 2020 on charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust in three separate cases: 1000, 2000, and 4000.
In Case 4000, Netanyahu is accused of orchestrating a corrupt quid pro quo with Shaul Elovitch, the controlling shareholder of the Bezeq telecommunications group and owner of the Walla news site, whereby the prime minister allegedly advanced regulatory decisions worth hundreds of millions of shekels to Bezeq in exchange for favorable and lenient coverage of him and his family on Walla.
Netanyahu has denied the allegations, arguing that regulatory decisions were professional and lawful and that media relations do not constitute criminal bribery.
“I had nothing to do with that [involvement in editorial coverage],” Netanyahu said on Monday.
“How can you even bring this up? You found one tiny raisin,” he charged at the prosecution.