The defense presented evidence on Wednesday in the public corruption trial of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of former Walla CEO Ilan Yeshua complaining to his editorial team in 2015 that it was mistreating Yisrael Beytenu Party leader Avigdor Liberman.
According to Netanyahu’s defense lawyer, Boaz Ben Zur, the Jerusalem District Court should conclude from this and other evidence that there was no media bribery scheme by Netanyahu.
Rather, he portrayed Yeshua as someone who interferes on a serial basis with news content, who told his editors in 2015, “Try not to attack Liberman. I met him two months ago, and he justifiably claimed that we are endlessly bashing him.”
In response to Yeshua, then-Walla chief editor Avi Alkalai texted (in 2015): “On the contrary, I would be happy to see positive headlines for him.”
Yeshua is a key witness for the prosecution in Case 4000, the Bezeq-Walla Affair, which alleges a mix of slanting Walla news coverage toward Netanyahu in exchange for government regulatory favoritism toward Bezeq.
A codefendant in the case, Shaul Elovitch, owned both Walla and Bezeq.
The former Walla CEO tried to distinguish the Liberman incident by saying he had met with him only once and that the Yisrael Beytenu leader had made zero requests for improved coverage.
Instead, Yeshua explained requests for improved coverage came during later contacts with Liberman’s advisers, such as Tzachi Moshe.
Ben Zur presented Yeshua with text messages from December 2014 in which Moshe wrote to him, “Hope you had a good weekend. Per our meeting and opening a new page [in our relations], if you want, I will give you an interview [with Liberman].”
Some of the text messages also got into significant detail about specific articles and how long, new and more positive articles on Liberman (after the meeting) remained in prominent spots on the website.
It appeared that the defense dived into this level of detail to try to show that the level of detail some of Netanyahu’s advisers engaged with Yeshua about was par for the course with many politicians.
Moreover, Ben Zur presented Yeshua with texts from December 2016 in which he referenced having an additional meeting with Liberman, saying, “I had a very good and friendly meeting with the Russian.”
Here, the defense was trying to undermine Yeshua’s credibility by saying he falsely downplayed his contacts with non-Netanyahu politicians, since he had said he had only one meeting with Liberman.
In the meantime, the prosecution has tried to refute these attacks, saying that all of the non-Netanyahu incidents combined add up to a couple dozen as compared to 315 incidents in which Netanyahu or his messengers intervened.
Further, the prosecution has argued that only Netanyahu could take – and took – concrete government policy actions to repay Elovitch’s Bezeq to the tune of NIS 1.8 billion for the positive coverage.
Wednesday was the first day of Ben Zur cross-examining Yeshua, after Shaul and Iris Elovitch’s lawyers had taken turns trying to undermine his credibility for the last several weeks.
It is also expected that Ben Zur will place even greater emphasis on putting space between any of Yeshua’s allegations and Netanyahu himself.