Dear President Herzog. You invited the public to make recommendations as to how you should respond to the prime minister’s request for a pardon, before a verdict is handed down. Here is the response letter that I recommend you write to him.
Dear Prime Minister Netanyahu
I am giving the most serious and responsible consideration possible to your extraordinary request for a pre-verdict pardon in your trial. The importance of the process is heightened by the fact that US President Donald Trump, one of Israel’s most treasured friends, has made a similar request.
Your letter has persuaded me to view your trial in a new light. The cases should be treated as a test of the supremacy of the law and of the principle of equality before the law in our democracy. However, you have added another dimension.
The outcome should also be measured as to how the verdict would impact the present intense polarization and division in Israel. Even before October 7, I warned that extreme internal division was the greatest threat to our existence. Our enemies interpreted the furious political fighting as a sign of vulnerability – and an opportunity to strike and break our nation.
While I do not see a major public upheaval centered about the current trial, I now conceive that if there were a conviction or a possible imprisonment of the head of state, then a significant part of the citizenry would be alienated, perhaps permanently.
Therefore, if there is a future conviction, I will give stronger consideration to using my power of presidential pardon to avoid a damaging rupture in the relationships between Israel’s tribes.
However, I cannot offer a pardon as a response to the present letter and material that you sent to me. The submission is predicated on your trial being an illegitimate attempt at a judicial coup to overthrow a government. The implication is that there is a deep state and that the police, state prosecution, and judiciary are conspiring to remove an elected representative of the people from office.
A pardon in response to this letter would be interpreted as a confirmation of these claims and a condemnation of the state institutions. I do not believe in the illegitimacy of the procedures in your cases. The police and state prosecution acted by professional standards on a difficult set of cases and the judges are presiding over the trial with objectivity, neutrality, and integrity as best they can.
Open to considering a pardon
I remain open to considering a request for a pardon now – if a new submission will acknowledge some guilt that would restore trust to the judiciary or includes a statement that upholds the legitimacy of the state institutions and repudiates the partisan politicized charges of illegitimacy and/or conspiracy theories that impugn the judicial branch of government.
Still, I want to encourage you to start acting now on the important statement in your submission: “I am committed to do everything in my power to heal the rifts, achieve unity among the people, and restore trust in the state’s systems – and I expect all heads of state organs to do the same.”
As president, I will do all in my power to help you overcome divisions and to strengthen this coming together among the public.
There are two areas where you can make an instant impact in restoring national unity. One is to stop the assault on the judiciary and the power of legislative review. It is especially important to end your refusal to work with the president of the Supreme Court and to stop the abuse and threats vis-à-vis him. Criticism of any institution is legitimate in a democracy but calls to trash institutions or individuals are not.
They are inflammatory and dangerous.
The second is in two pieces of legislation. Setting up a State Commission of Inquiry and enabling a full review of the failures that led to October 7 can create a national consensus on present and future policy. A political commission – however balanced it may try to be – cannot end the bitterness or restore the trust that is needed.
Similarly, passing legislation on drafting haredim (ultra-Orthodox) into the IDF – which the military has already stated cannot meet the manpower needs of the armed forces going forward – can only inflame divisions in the country. Such legislation will intensify the public’s anger at the failure of all groups to share the national burdens of sovereignty and security in a fair and equal manner.
We need to work to heal the public discourse and to pursue policies that will unify our nation. I also believe that if the government advances more unifying policies in these highly controversial areas, a potential pre-verdict pardon would be more sympathetically received among wider circles of our people.
The writer is a senior scholar in residence at the Hadar Institute.