Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sharply attacked the prosecution during his testimony in his trial, saying it had cherry-picked a small number of cases from thousands of negative stories about him to create a false picture of unusual responsiveness from the news site Walla. He said the site was consistently hostile toward him for years and described a few positive articles as “a cherry in a poisoned cake.”
The testimony came on one of the last hearings in which Netanyahu is expected to appear. A heated exchange broke out between his defense lawyer, Amit Hadad, and prosecutor Yehudit Tirosh over how the evidence in the case was presented. Hadad argued that the prosecution focused in cross-examination on less than 10% of the items in the indictment and called them “isolated items.” Netanyahu responded, “It’s not just 315, it’s thousands, thousands and thousands of negative articles, thousands! ... You take 15 cases like this against this hostile sea and try to present it as something positive, it’s simply a big lie.”
Netanyahu accused the prosecution of hiding material facts and said it was trying to build a distorted case. He added that the few favorable stories cited by the state were attempts to fabricate a theory, saying, “They moved from version to version to create a construct.” During the argument, the court also clashed over “Item 52,” an item involving Avner Netanyahu. Hadad said the prosecution had promised clarification in cross-examination but had not asked about it, while Tirosh replied, “Come on,” and said the state had not presented every event because Netanyahu’s answers were “clear and unequivocal.”
Judge Moshe Bar-Am interrupted and told the sides, “What a waste of time,” urging them to move on, while Judge Friedman-Feldman accepted the prosecution’s objection to broadening the discussion on one point. During the hearing, Netanyahu received a sealed envelope, apologized, and left the courtroom for a few minutes.
The defense is seeking to undermine the central theory of the indictment, that favorable coverage was tied to governmental benefits. The article notes that Case 2000, one of the major corruption cases, concerns Netanyahu’s relationship with Yedioth Ahronoth publisher Noni Mozes, with the prosecution claiming Netanyahu advanced legislation to hurt Israel Hayom in exchange for favorable coverage, while Netanyahu says Mozes initiated the effort and that he never intended to pass such a law.
