Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s testimony in his corruption trial ended definitively on Wednesday in the Jerusalem District Court after months of tense hearings. As the session opened, defense lawyer Amit Hadad complained that he was being prevented from asking many questions in the re-examination and said this was harming the defense. Judges Rivka Friedman-Feldman and Moshe Bar-Am replied that the defense’s claims had already been reflected throughout the record and that no negative impression had been created.
Hadad then sharply cut back his questions and moved to question Netanyahu about Case 4000. Netanyahu used the moment to attack the prosecution and the Walla news site, saying the attempt to present a few items out of hundreds as unusual favorable coverage was a “mad distortion.” He said, “They moved from version to version to find a construction, it reaches the realms of the absurd.”
Once Hadad finished his cross-examination, Netanyahu addressed the judges directly in an unusual and emotional closing statement. He said that over the past 10 years investigators had been sent around the world to comb through his life, adding, “They investigated all my relatives and family, destroyed families. The race to find something, they did not look for an offense, they looked for a person and found nothing.”
Netanyahu then challenged the three main cases against him. He called Case 4000 a fictitious construction that is collapsing, said in the Mozes case he sacrificed his government and future in order to work against shutting down Israel Hayom, and accused the system in Case 1000 of witness extortion and hiding assets. He also condemned police use of Pegasus spyware on dozens of people, asking, “How in a democracy do you put Pegasus on dozens? We are not a police state.” He ended by saying, “I am finishing, ma’am, after 10 years of hell ... this vile, false and evil thing directed against the public’s right to choose me. You cannot give back the 10 years to me and my family, but you can bring truth and justice.” Hadad then thanked the judges for their patience, and the testimony was formally closed.
