Netanyahu's circus of a trial delegitimizes democracy

“They are trying to topple me and the entire right wing,” he claimed, adding a who’s who of Israeli “leftists” who are out to get him.

By JPOST EDITORIAL
Supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outside the court (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
Supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outside the court
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
The “trial of the century” began Sunday like the three-ring circus it had threatened to be.
What took place in the tiny courtroom in Jerusalem District Court where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu became the first sitting Israeli prime minister to go on trial – accused of bribery, fraud and breach of trust – proved to be an orderly session consisting of dry procedural issues pertaining to the logistics of the trial, with both the prosecution and defendant’s attorneys predictably digging in with their positions.
The fireworks that turned the serious proceedings into a Middle Eastern shuk took place outside the courtroom – in the corridor of the stone courthouse, outside on Salah a-Din Street and near the Prime Minister’s Residence on Balfour Street. That’s where interested parties across the political spectrum, including Netanyahu, attempted to take the case out of the hands of the three judges assigned to the trial and take control of the judicial process.
Outside the courthouse, hundreds of boisterous protesters gathered (most without face masks and without practicing social distancing), ostensibly to show their support for the accused prime minister, but in essence their mission was to declare the trial illegitimate. (Across town in another unnecessary, health-risking gathering, hundreds of Netanyahu opponents toasted the opening of the trial with champagne.)
As The Jerusalem Post’s Jeremy Sharon reported from the court-side protest, cries of “antisemites,” “leftists,” “post-Zionists” and “Israel haters” were just some of the epithets used to describe senior law enforcement officials, while other demonstrators compared Netanyahu to Alfred Dreyfus in 19th-century Paris while calling for Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit to be put on trial.
The rowdy crowd took its cue from the beliefs of the person they had come to support – the prime minister. Netanyahu, who had attempted to avoid attending Sunday’s opening session, ended up grabbing the spotlight in every way possible, in an effort to dominate the headlines and coverage.
In a smart PR move, he had the Likud ministers bused to the courthouse to portray solidarity in a much-publicized photo taken without the court’s permission. As the Post’s Gil Hoffman wrote, media from around the world had gathered to report on the prime minister standing alone in a courtroom facing serious charges. The presence of the Likud ministers, as well as the cynical use of a group of Holocaust survivors who also pledged allegiance to the prime minister, helped to dull that sharp image.
Where things took a far more sinister turn was when Netanyahu gave a long statement to the media before the trial’s launch. First, he attempted to deflect the charges against him as an indictment against anyone in Israel with a right-wing political viewpoint.
“They are trying to topple me and the entire right wing,” he claimed, adding a who’s who of Israeli “leftists” who are out to get him. “The police, prosecution, press and the Left and the legal establishment joined together to bring me down....”
That doesn’t leave many people or institutions on the other side, as Netanyahu made sure to cover all the bases with his base statements. But as Hoffman astutely pointed out, the verdict in this trial, which is a watershed moment in Israeli history, is not going to be decided by partisan Likud voters or Israelis who distrust the legal establishment and the police. Rather, it is going to be ruled upon by the three judges, who will absorb all the evidence presented by both sides and make judgments based on the facts, not emotional appeals or demagogic tirades.
Netanyahu managed to shift the focus on this first day of his trial away from the image of a prime minister on trial to the image of a prime minister being lynched by a crooked system out to get him.
That attack on the democratic institutions of the country might have been effective in the short term, but when the court reconvenes in July and witnesses start taking the stand in the coming months (or even years), the focus will again shift to where it should be – on the charges, the defense and whether the prime minister is guilty or innocent.


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