Netanyahu Tells Court Prosecutors Are Inventing a Crime in Case 2000

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu testified on Tuesday in Tel Aviv District Court in Case 2000, sharply attacking prosecutors and arguing they are trying to create a criminal offense retroactively. The case centers on 2014 to 2015 recorded conversations between Netanyahu and Yedioth Ahronoth publisher Noni Mozes about improving coverage in exchange for curbing legislation targeting Israel Hayom.

Netanyahu insisted the talks were political, not criminal. “No one thought that the relationship between publishers and politicians was a criminal matter,” he said, adding, “You are still trying to invent here retroactively an offense that does not exist.” He rejected claims that he viewed the use of “sticks and carrots” or positive and negative coverage as illegal, saying, “There was definitely not” any belief that a crime was involved.

He told the court that the recordings were merely “ammunition” for a political fight against Mozes. “I used it in the sense that I had raw material to launch an unprecedented attack on Mozes,” he said. Netanyahu added that he never checked whether the recordings worked and did not even remember the conversations: “I did not check the recordings. I can assume it recorded. I did not remember these conversations at all.” He described his conduct as part of a “cold war” meant to prevent hostile coverage of his family.

The prosecution argued that circulation figures for Israel Hayom showed the deal was being carried out, pointing to a drop in the daily edition from 325,000 to 275,000 copies in January 2015. Netanyahu dismissed that as a fictional construct, while his lawyer, Amit Hadad, said the argument is false and not in the indictment, and demanded weekend circulation data that he said had not changed. Tension rose during the hearing, and Judge Rivka Friedman-Feldman intervened to require full transcripts after Hadad accused the prosecution of quoting only fragments to mislead the court.