After 18 Months and 98 Hearings, Netanyahu Finishes Testifying in His Trial

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu completed his testimony on Wednesday at the Tel Aviv District Court after about a year and a half and 98 hearings. From now on, the trial will continue without his presence in the courtroom, and the next stage will focus on other key witnesses after the defense finishes its re-examination.

The hearing was combative from the start. Netanyahu’s lawyer, Amit Hadad, accused the prosecution of presenting partial and misleading material, saying it had created a “facade of lies” to support a conspiracy theory. Netanyahu echoed that tone, calling the prosecution’s conduct a “mass of lies.” Prosecutor Yehudit Tirush rejected the accusations and said she was presenting the record as it appears in Yifat Shegev’s statements.

The sharpest exchanges centered on alleged meetings between Netanyahu and Shaul Elovitch, as well as the prosecution’s account of a Japan trip, which Hadad challenged by asking how that memory “was born.” Netanyahu replied angrily that “30 lawyers” were spending “hundreds of shekels” from the state and “knew very well” that he had been talking about Japan. Another dispute involved the testimony of Yifat Shegev, with the defense stressing that she described herself as professionally independent, while the prosecution said she was subordinate to a minister.

The judges repeatedly intervened to calm the room and move the hearing along. Judge Revital Friedman-Feldman urged the sides to advance their arguments, while Judge Moshe Bar-Am asked, “Where are we going?” and questioned whether every article had to be examined. The defense’s broader goal remains to dismantle the prosecution’s conspiracy theory in Case 4000 and argue that the evidence does not support its interpretation, including claims of selective enforcement.