As his testimony ends, Netanyahu's credibility remains at the heart of his case - analysis

The prosecution’s cross-examination began on June 3, 2025, after nearly six months of direct examination, and ended on June 16 after 59 hearing days.

The trial will now continue with the remaining defense witnesses. After the evidence phase ends, the parties will submit summaries before the three-judge Jerusalem District Court panel issues a verdict.

The 2020 indictment contains three separate affairs.

In Case 4000, the Bezeq-Walla affair, he is charged with bribery as well as fraud and breach of trust over the alleged exchange of regulatory benefits for favorable treatment at Walla.

Netanyahu had an answer in every case; cross-examination was about whether those answers could survive contact with the evidence around them: the gifts and official assistance sought by Milchan in Case 1000, the Walla requests and Bezeq decisions in Case 4000, and the recorded Mozes conversations in Case 2000.

Throughout the testimony, Netanyahu described the conduct as ordinary: friendship with Milchan, a political battle with Mozes, and hostile coverage at Walla that prosecutors had recast as a media-for-regulation deal.

The prosecution argued that the events only looked ordinary when viewed in a single file. Put together, it said, they showed a prime minister whose personal relationships, media interests, and official decisions repeatedly met in the same place.

Memory was another recurring fault line. On the first day of cross-examination, prosecutor Yonatan Tadmor said Netanyahu had answered that he did not remember 1,788 times during police questioning in Cases 1000 and 2000.

That issue resurfaced throughout the testimony. Prosecutors treated gaps in Netanyahu’s recollection as part of the credibility problem they were trying to establish, while Netanyahu maintained that he was answering honestly when he could not recall a detail.

Netanyahu did not deny that he and Milchan were friends, but insisted that the gifts were part of a relationship that continued even when he was out of office: “It was not about my position – it was friendship.”

This friendship was not something the prosecution needed to disprove. Tadmor instead focused on the scale of the gifts, Milchan’s access to Netanyahu’s staff, and the assistance sought.

The legal fight centered on whether Netanyahu could treat the gifts as private while being asked to use public power in matters affecting the man who gave them.

Netanyahu insisted he did not provide exceptional treatment, saying during one hearing, “I’m not a dog. I don’t come when people whistle.”

The judges must decide whether the relationship remained private or crossed into a conflict created by public office.

Case 4000 was the hardest file because neither side could point to one clear exchange.

The prosecution instead asked the judges to connect alleged coverage requests, contacts involving Netanyahu’s advisers, the alleged meeting with former Communications Ministry director-general Shlomo Filber – a former Netanyahu aide who became a state witness – and regulatory decisions involving Bezeq into one alleged arrangement.

Netanyahu’s answer was equally consistent: Walla was “a very hostile website.” He denied directing coverage, knowing of improper intervention, or giving Filber the alleged instruction.

“I did not say anything to Filber,” Netanyahu told the court. “I did not speak to him about this at all.”

In the final re-examination, defense attorney Amit Hadad said the defense had reviewed 315 coverage items with Netanyahu in direct examination, while the prosecution had focused on roughly 14 or 15.

The defense said the prosecution selected a handful of items from a much larger picture of hostile coverage. Prosecutors said those episodes show the “unusual responsiveness” alleged in the indictment.

This is why Case 4000 was the most demanding. The prosecution did not have one recording in which Netanyahu and Shaul Elovitch explicitly traded coverage for regulation.

It rather asked the judges to infer an arrangement from Filber’s account; contacts with the Prime Minister’s Residence; aides’ requests; the conduct of Shaul Elovitch, then Bezeq’s controlling shareholder and Walla’s owner, and his wife, Iris; regulatory decisions affecting Bezeq; and the coverage itself.

Netanyahu’s credibility matters because that chain repeatedly returned to the same question: What did he know, what did he direct, and when?

Case 2000 is different because the conversations between Netanyahu and Mozes were recorded.

The dispute was not whether they spoke about Israel Hayom and coverage; it was whether Netanyahu was genuinely negotiating the proposed exchange or merely stringing Mozes along.

According to the indictment, Mozes offered improved coverage of Netanyahu and worse coverage of his political rivals in return for steps that would restrict Israel Hayom.

Prosecutors said Netanyahu discussed a softened Israel Hayom bill to keep Mozes from launching an all-out campaign before the 2015 election.

Netanyahu said he was managing a political and media rival, not negotiating a criminal arrangement. He described the strategy as trying to keep a “cold war” with Mozes from becoming a “hot war.”

Unlike Case 4000, the conversations themselves were not reconstructed from surrounding evidence – they were on tape. That made the dispute narrower, but not simpler: the judges must decide whether Netanyahu’s words show real bargaining or political theater.

Case 2000 also became a way to test the defense in Case 4000. Prosecutors argued that Netanyahu’s willingness to discuss Mozes’s business interests weakened his claim that Elovitch never spoke to him about Bezeq. Netanyahu called that a false comparison.

For much of the year, the cross-examination had a second subject: whether it would take place at all.

War, illness, travel, security and diplomatic demands, government business, official ceremonies, and confidential material all shortened, delayed, or canceled hearings.

Some requests involved security material that the judges reviewed in closed session, while others led to open friction.

The result was a trial heard in fragments, where the court repeatedly had to decide whether the demands of a sitting prime minister outweighed the need to maintain a continuous criminal proceeding.

Netanyahu’s request for a presidential pardon, submitted while Case 4000 cross-examination was underway, added a separate track to the legal process. It did not halt the proceedings, and its timing did not prove what the defense thought about the evidence.

But it made the dual nature of the case impossible to ignore: the court continued testing the indictment, while a parallel public and political discussion considered whether the case should end without a verdict.

The immediate next stages are remaining defense evidence, summaries, and then judgment.

But Friedman-Feldman is due to retire in March 2028, creating a practical pressure point for the panel as it tries to move the case forward.

Netanyahu’s testimony is now on the record. His lawyers can call witnesses and argue that prosecutors have misunderstood the evidence, but any later argument will be measured against the account he gave from the witness stand.

The judges are left with three versions of the same broader story. Netanyahu says the prosecution criminalized friendship, political self-defense, and ordinary government conduct. The prosecution says those labels obscure the use of public power around him.

The verdict will depend on which description better fits what the court has heard.