Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu testified Tuesday morning at the Tel Aviv District Court in his own trial. Last week, the cross-examination ended after 59 hearing days, and the defense has now begun its reexamination, which is expected to last several days before Netanyahu finishes his testimony.
Defense lawyer Amit Hadad argued that the prosecution tried during cross-examination to show that Netanyahu never intended to leave politics after his first term as prime minister, when he lost an election and took a break from public life. Hadad instead sought to bolster Netanyahu’s claim that his ties with businessman Arnon Milchan were a “pure friendship,” one that continued even while Netanyahu was a private citizen before returning to national politics.
Netanyahu said, “They wrote me off back then, and saw me as a political corpse, and I saw myself that way too.” He also said, “I believed in the system, I never imagined that Israeli investigators would lie to a prime minister, and that the prosecutors in the trial would continue in the same way, it is shocking.”
