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BENJAMIN NETANYAHU IS ON TRIAL FOR HIS POLITICAL LIFE  
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Uri Weltmann
December 17, 2024
Jacobin
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_ The ICC’s arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu on charges of
genocide has attracted global attention. But in Israel, he faces a
trial for corruption to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars
that could mean the end of his political career. _

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends his trial on
corruption charges at the district court in Tel Aviv on December 16,
2024., Stoyan Nenov / AFP via Getty Images

 

Since Israel began its war on Gaza, there have been calls for the
country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to stand trial. Thanks
to strong support from the United States and some of its allies, it
seems unlikely that Netanyahu will have to defend himself against
charges of genocide at the Hague any time soon. This has not, however,
spared him from having to defend himself before a court of law.
Israel’s prime minister spent much of last week in a Tel Aviv
courthouse standing trial for graft.

Five years after being indicted, Netanyahu took the witness stand and
for hours was forced to answer questions about the severe corruption
charges he is accused of committing. This is the first time in
Israel’s history that a serving prime minister has stood trial. The
proceedings have polarized the Israeli public since 2019. Political
parties have, during this period, partly defined themselves based on
whether they are for or against Netanyahu. Israel has seen five
elections in three and a half years as neither Netanyahu nor his
rivals have been able to form stable coalition governments.

Three Cases

The trial involves three separate criminal cases. In the first of
these, the so-called Case 1000, Netanyahu is charged with fraud and
breach of trust, having allegedly received gifts of expensive cigars,
as well as champagne and jewelry for his wife, Sara. The total value
of these gifts is around $200,000. The generous benefactors were
Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan — an Israeli billionaire who
resides in the United States — and Australian media mogul James
Packer.

The prosecution maintains that in exchange for these gifts, Netanyahu
used his status as prime minister to help Milchan with his business
interests. This includes pressuring Israel’s Ministry of Finance
into handing out tax exemptions to Milchan, trying to lift government
regulation to allow for Milchan to expand his control over Israeli
television companies, and using his influence to extend Milchan’s US
visa.

Case 2000 also involves charges of fraud and breach of trust. The
prosecutors maintain that Arnon Mozes, the owner of _Yedioth
Ahronoth_, Israel’s biggest-selling daily newspaper, had attempted
to bribe Netanyahu. According to the allegations, Netanyahu negotiated
with Mozes to receive better coverage in the paper for himself and his
family in exchange for promoting legislation that would inhibit the
circulation of _Yedioth Ahronoth_’s biggest rival, a free daily
newspaper.

Case 4000, the most severe of the three, charges Netanyahu directly
with bribery. The allegations are that the prime minister promised
regulatory favors to Shaul Elovitch, the owner of the Bezeq
telecommunications company, in exchange for positive media coverage
for Netanyahu and his wife on the news website _Walla_, owned by
Elovitch. The attorney general has estimated that these illicit
dealings benefited Elovitch to the tune of five hundred million
dollars.

As a result of Netanyahu’s corruption trial, major protests erupted
in 2020, continuing into 2021, referred to by the media as the
“Balfour Protests” after Balfour Street in Jerusalem, the location
of the prime minister’s residency. These protests helped mobilize
center-left voters. This, along with his disastrous mishandling
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COVID-19 crisis, led Prime Minister Netanyahu to lose the March 2021
election.

An Unpopular Front

The coalition that emerged in March 2021 was a shaky one. Nicknamed
the “Government of Change,” it was comprised of parties of the
Right, the Center, and the Left, and even included the United Arab
List, which is the electoral wing of the Arab and Islamic Movement.
The glue that held together these parties, which disagreed over
diverse questions — from whether to raise the minimum wage to
whether to engage in negotiations with the Palestinian Authority and
the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) — was their opposition
to Netanyahu.

The right-wing parties within the anti-Netanyahu bloc forced through
harsh, unpopular economic austerity: raising the retirement age for
women, suspending furlough payments for unemployed workers, raising
the price of public transportation, and cutting childcare subsidies.
Netanyahu — always the right-populist — employed social demagogy
mixed with racist incitement, claiming the government pushed these
austerity measures in order to allocate tens of billions of shekels to
the United Arab List. This pressure influenced several right-wing
members of the ruling coalition, who — owing also to their careerism
and opportunism — decided to defect to Netanyahu’s party, lured by
promises of future ministerial posts in his next government.

After this highly unstable coalition collapsed, and Netanyahu returned
to power in the November 2022 elections, waging an election campaign
focused on promises of increased social spending, he now presides over
the most nationalist and extremist government in Israel’s history.
One of the first policies announced by his new far-right government
following the elections was a plan to reform the judicial system in
such a way that would give the government decisive power over the
judicial branch.

For many, this represents an attempt by Netanyahu to tilt the board in
his favor, trying to delay or derail his corruption trial. Others
pointed to the detrimental effects of this reform — “the Judicial
Overhaul” or “the Judicial Coup” as critics have termed it —
on democratic rights and civil liberties within Israel.

The response was a major wave of protests — drawing hundreds of
thousands to the streets, week after week, for almost ten months —
alarmed at the antidemocratic nature of the proposed reforms. For the
most part, these protests were led by liberal-centrist political
forces, whose criticism of Netanyahu was limited to his corruption
charges and to his infringement on the independence of the judicial
system. Most of the opposition forces, especially those of the center
and the moderate right, saw this mass protest as a denunciation of
Netanyahu, but not of Netanyahu’s policies. The continuation of the
occupation and his neoliberal austerity were left unchallenged.

Yet within the so-called Democracy Protests, there was also a left
wing. These groups and movements stressed that combatting the far
right effectively required addressing the totality of their political
project, not only their intention to dismantle the judicial system.
Various groups intervened in these mass protests, each according to
its own political line and communication strategy. However, despite
mobilizing the activist left, these voices remained in the margins of
a mass protest movement that generally saw broader social critique as
an obstacle to winning greater public support, and sometimes also as a
distraction from its core focus of equating “democracy” with
“independence of the judiciary.”

Following October 7, and the war that ensued, the judicial overhaul
took backstage. The mass demonstrations, which used to draw huge
crowds on a regular basis, stopped almost overnight. Nobody talked
about Netanyahu’s trial or the judiciary, neither the liberal
opposition nor the far-right government, whose ministers now turned to
spend their days making genocidal statements against the Palestinians.
It would take months before Israelis came out to the streets en masse
again.

When they did, it was to pressure the government to agree to a hostage
deal, one that would bring back alive the Israeli hostages held
captive by Hamas inside the Gaza Strip. These protests, which
represent a sort of continuation of the two previous protest waves,
have for many months also called for Netanyahu’s resignation and for
early elections to be held.

Currently, the demand to end the war on Gaza through a hostage deal
enjoys strong support
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among 72 percent of Israelis. Among voters who support the
Netanyahu-aligned parties, 56 percent back a deal to stop the war in
return for the hostages.

This reflects the fact that the protest movement by the families of
the hostages was incredibly successful in building opposition to the
war among Israeli public sentiment, being far more effective at that
than the official opposition parties, which trailed public opinion and
started to publicly question the war only after the polls showed a
conclusive majority wanted it to end.

All the while, the peace movement in Israel has continued to mobilize
against the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, despite police repression,
calling to stop the killing of innocent Palestinians, lift the siege
on Gaza, and allow humanitarian aid to deal with the unfolding
humanitarian catastrophe.

Netanyahu is now on a collision course with public opinion in Israel.
His insistence on continuing the war in Gaza is both an expression of
his deeply held belief in maintaining a state of permanent conflict,
and also of the fact that his coalition partners — the Religious
Zionism Party and the openly fascist Jewish Power Party — have
threatened to withdraw their support from his government, forcing
early elections, if he agrees to a deal that would end the war.

For Netanyahu, early elections spell doom, since polls
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consistently show that the parties that currently form his coalition
government are expected to lose their majority in the Knesset, winning
together only fifty-one out of the 120 Knesset seats. The new
government that could be formed as a result of such elections will
possibly be a repeat of the “Government of Change,” although it
remains unclear who will be the dominant forces within it and who will
assume the role of prime minister.

In the meanwhile, Netanyahu’s lawyers are stalling for time in his
corruption trial, trying to postpone court sessions, citing his
responsibilities as prime minister. But if removed from office, his
trial is expected to continue with vigor. Thus, the prospect of seeing
Netanyahu behind bars remains likely. If not in the Hague, then
perhaps in Tel Aviv.

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Uri Weltmann is the national field organizer of Standing Together,
Israel’s biggest grassroots movement of Jewish and Palestinian
citizens that campaigns for peace, equality, and social and climate
justice.

* Benjamin Netanyahu
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