I beg your pardon, but there’s a burning topic that needs to be addressed: the 111-page request submitted this week to President Isaac Herzog by Benjamin Netanyahu’s lawyers, asking that the prime minister be granted a pardon, even though his various trials are ongoing and he is not admitting guilt. It was described throughout the media as a “bombshell.” It is certainly unprecedented, but then so is the situation.
I was sad that it had come to this – a state of affairs in which there can be no winners. In a video that Netanyahu released to accompany the request, he said: “The ongoing trial has torn us apart from within, has inspired fierce disagreements [and] has deepened divisions. I am sure, like many other Israelis, that the immediate end of the trial will greatly help lower the flames and will promote the broad reconciliation that our country so badly needs.”
That might be the truth, but it is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The divisions – more like chasmic rifts – predated the start of the trial in May 2020 by many years, arguably since Netanyahu was first elected prime minister in 1996, and will no doubt continue to plague us for years to come, whether or not the trial reaches some kind of conclusion.
There is massive distrust on both sides – of Netanyahu and his supporters on the one hand and of the judicial system on the other. “Just not Bibi” (“Rak lo Bibi”) long ago turned from being a protest catchphrase into a political camp united by an obsession with the man who persists in winning democratic elections.
This week, at least five politicians who see themselves as leading the opposition and potentially replacing Netanyahu in the Prime Minister’s Office used remarkably similar terms to condemn the pardon request. Yair Lapid, Yair Golan, Naftali Bennett, and Avigdor Liberman all demanded that a pardon be granted only if Netanyahu resigns; Liberman and Benny Gantz both accused Netanyahu of trying to divert attention from the proposed legislation that would continue to broadly exempt the ultra-Orthodox from military service.
The trial is based on three separate cases – Case 1000, Case 2000, and Case 4000. (Case 3000, the so-called Submarines’ Affair, sank before coming to trial.) Without intervention, court hearings could continue for many more years in which Netanyahu will be asked to dredge his memory for why his friend Arnon Milchan bought his son a large stuffed Bugs Bunny decades ago, and how many cigars and bottles of champagne he received.
He’ll be asked to recall when he met or spoke to then-Yediot Aharonot publisher and editor Arnon (Noni) Mozes, or businessman Shaul Elovitch and staff at the Walla Internet site that Elovitch owned, about receiving positive coverage more than 10 years ago. It is hard, however, to find evidence that Netanyahu received favorable press from the mainstream media; even the judges have warned the state attorney that the charges of bribery are weak.
If the court finds Netanyahu guilty, it will reinforce the belief among his supporters that he has been the victim of a judicial witch hunt; if found innocent, his detractors will claim that he has forced his will on the courts via the threats of judicial reform. Either way, the rifts and lack of trust will persist.
This is not about seeking either justice or national unity, but about something else altogether, to which Netanyahu also alluded to in his video. “The State of Israel faces tremendous challenges alongside tremendous opportunities. To repel the threats [and] to seize the opportunities, national unity is essential... President Trump called for an immediate end to the trial so that I might be able, alongside him, to advance with redoubled efforts the vital interests shared by Israel and the United States in a time window that is unlikely ever to reappear.”
I’m not happy with Trump intervening in Israel’s domestic affairs and calling on Herzog to pardon the prime minister. I was equally upset when president Joe Biden voiced opposition to the government’s judicial reform program, as if amendments to Israel’s “Reasonableness Law” were a matter of American national security.
Many believe that the charges were filed in the hope that Netanyahu would resign (as prime minister Ehud Olmert did ahead of the corruption cases in which he was later found guilty). Although the buildup to the trial had been going on for years, the timing of the decision to indict Netanyahu was telling – and partly explains Netanyahu’s pardon request this week.
Then-attorney-general Avichai Mandelblit filed the indictment on January 28, 2020, when Netanyahu was still in the United States ahead of the announcement of Trump’s “Deal of the Century,” which later morphed into the Abraham Accords. Just as the Middle East was opening up, attention was refocused on the weakened prime minister who was meant to implement the deal.
A similar situation exists today. The Hamas invasion and mega-atrocity of October 7, 2023, on Netanyahu’s watch as prime minister, led to a broad war on seven fronts that has quieted down rather than ended. The Middle East today, as a result of Israel’s actions during the war, is not the same as it was two years ago: Iran’s nuclear and ballistic weapons program has been severely damaged and its terror proxies weakened; Hezbollah no longer holds the Lebanese government in a stranglehold; after decades of ruthless power, the Assad regime in Syria fell; and while Hamas still exists in Gaza, it controls a restricted area with far less power than it held pre-October 7.
In short, facts on the ground on all of Israel’s borders have changed considerably, and this has opened a window on new diplomatic possibilities. A new Deal of the Century, expanding the Abraham Accords, and other options can now be considered, especially while Trump is still in office, ahead of Israel’s general election scheduled for October 2026. But that window might be open only briefly.
THE FACT that the prime minister’s court appearances not only continued but increased in frequency during the war turned the court into a theater of the absurd. The judges demanded that Netanyahu appear in the defendant’s box three times a week, often for a full day – more frequently than most other criminal trials.
This has led to scenes both farcical and dangerous. When the prime minister is periodically interrupted and handed a note while he sits in the courtroom, every intelligence agency – friend or foe – can try to determine the contents and significance of the message. Similarly, he is frequently forced to ask the court’s permission to skip a day due to an important state or security situation. Again, the whole world is then alerted that something is going on.
The three district court justices are not just judging Netanyahu’s past actions – they have de facto assumed power over the prime minister’s itinerary and order of priorities. At one stage, the court ordered the equivalent of a “parent’s letter,” demanding the head of Military Intelligence appear in person to explain whether or not the prime minister’s request to be absent was justified. As many noted at the time, if the judges don’t trust Netanyahu to tell the truth about matters of state security, what are the chances of them believing his testimony and giving him a fair trial?
HERZOG NOW has to contend with a tremendous dilemma regarding the pardon request. Like the trial itself, no result is going to be fully accepted and certainly not unifying. It’s a pity the president didn’t use his position many months ago to call on Attorney-General Gali Baharav Miara and the judiciary to at least suspend the case.
Now, even if Herzog ultimately agrees to grant the extraordinary pardon – with or without certain conditions – there is a chance the High Court will strike it down, exacerbating the judicial crisis while “Just not Bibi” protesters are threatening to hound the president for political eternity if he gives the prime minister what he wants. (The self-proclaimed defenders of the law cannot accept the principle of “innocent until proven guilty” when it comes to their nemesis, Netanyahu.)
The ball is now in the president’s court. It’s doubtful that even Solomon, in all his wisdom, would have been able to issue a ruling that would satisfy everyone.