Daniel Cohen, a former legal adviser to the Labor Party, issued a sharply critical assessment of Benjamin Netanyahu’s trial in an interview with Bat El Benjamin, arguing that the prosecution and law-enforcement system badly overreached. Cohen said, “There is nothing in the Netanyahu trial, and there never was,” and claimed, “There was a rebellion by the jurists. The prosecution went hunting for the prime minister, trying to carry out a regime coup, and did not shy away from any means.” He added that improper technological and legal tools were used in ways that were “completely contrary to the law.”
As evidence of what he sees as structural flaws in the case, Cohen pointed to the unusual number of amendments made to the indictments before the evidentiary stage began in court. “The indictment was amended five times even before the trial started,” he said, arguing that this shows the case was built on the mistaken assumption that the prime minister would “fold, break, and decide to leave politics.”
Cohen also attacked the requirement that Netanyahu spend months in the witness box while Israel faces major security challenges. “The worst of all is the harm to the prime minister’s standing during a war and to national security,” he said. He noted that Netanyahu has been required to attend 98 hearings and answer lengthy questions, including, as he put it, “ridiculous questions about Bugs Bunny.”
He concluded that the target of public scrutiny is no longer the defendant. In his words, “For me, this has long since ceased to be the Netanyahu trial, it is a trial of the prosecution, the law-enforcement bodies, the attorney general, and the media as a whole.”
