I was going to devote my entire article this week to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s appearance in The Patriots on Channel 14 last Tuesday evening. However, I am starting with an interview given by attorney Navot Tel-Zur last Friday on the Ofira, Ohana, Seri show on Channel 12.
Tel-Zur is one of Israel’s leading and most prominent defense attorneys in the field of white-collar offenses. Soon after former attorney-general Avichai Mandelblit decided to indict Netanyahu on charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust on November 21, 2019, Tel-Zur became part of Netanyahu’s defense team. But five months later, he resigned.
In his interview last Friday, Tel-Zur stated that he had resigned because he had not been paid his lawyer’s fee due to bureaucratic reasons. He still has not been paid, but he has refrained from taking any action on the matter.
The reason I decided to quote the interview is that Tel-Zur’s views on Netanyahu and his trial seem to me to be fair and balanced.
Asked whether he thinks Netanyahu is corrupt, he answered, “I don’t think he is corrupt. I think he is extremely talented. I think that his survival and political instincts, and his determination to remain in power as prime minister, have led him to some very bad things, such as October 7, for which he does not take responsibility…”
He added, “I don’t think Netanyahu is capable of resigning of his own free will. He is built for survival; you can see his strength, these are his advantages, he has skills that you cannot take away from him.”
On the issue of the request for a pardon, Tel-Zur said: “The request for a pardon that was submitted is contrary to the law. It is not a request for a pardon, and [President Isaac Herzog] should not have responded to it.
“It is a request for a cessation of proceedings. It is a request to stop the trial. It declares itself to be the latter, because the prime minister states within the request, ‘I am innocent, these are fabricated accusations, I am convinced that should I continue the trial to its end, I shall be found innocent on all counts.’”
Tel-Zur begged to differ on the issue of “fabricated accusations.”
“I don’t believe that the State Attorney’s Office fabricates accusations,” he said. “Sometimes they seem to be on a semi-messianic mission, confident that they are saving the state. Bibi also thinks he is on a mission to save the state from Iran. Each side and its mission, and they are both excessively eager and ambitious.”
His conclusion: “This trial has been going on for six years already, since the indictment was presented. This is not the way to conduct a trial in the State of Israel; it is a severe blow to public trust in proper legal proceedings, and it is ammunition in the hands of those who criticize the legal system and argue that the trial is unjust.
“The management is in the hands of the court, and my criticism of the judges at the moment is that this trial is losing its value. For example, the bribery issue being dealt with now… the judges [who stated that the charge of bribery should be removed from case 4000] did not explain their position…
“The State Attorney’s Office must also respect the court and examine themselves – perhaps they have a different evaluation of the evidence... Perhaps we are not talking of bribery here... but about a serious conflict of interests.”
Something peculiar
Netanyahu's “interview” on The Patriots was not really an interview, but an opportunity for him to brag of his achievements – real or false – for the ears of his political base, with barely a word of criticism from his hosts.
To begin with, I would like to say that the critics of the event were not completely fair in their total mockery of it. At the same time, there was a lot that was peculiar, or simply did not tally with the facts.
The first peculiarity about the event was that Netanyahu was accompanied by his wife Sara, seated on a rather weird-looking white armchair, looking grumpy. Likud bully and agitator Mordechai David was seated on a separate chair next to her. What exactly was he doing there?
Asked how October 7, 2023, had affected him, Netanyahu first answered that he had “lost some weight.” A little later, he added that after October 7, he was convinced that Israel should be a state that has an army – not an army that has a state.
He didn’t say a word about the effects of the horrors of that day: 1,200 persons tortured and murdered by Hamas, and another 251 hostages abducted to Gaza, both alive and dead.
He did not express remorse or sympathy for the families involved. No taking of responsibility. Nothing about the called-for conclusion, that everything must be done in the future to prevent the recurrence of such a horror, and no mention of the appointment of a state commission of inquiry to investigate what had gone wrong.
Later on, answering a question about the horrors suffered by himself and his family during the war, the only experience Netanyahu mentioned was that during the war his wife had suffered a horrific experience. She had spent a long and difficult day performing her job as a child psychologist in a rather complicated situation, and then, when returning home, had to confront hateful attacks from anti-government demonstrators outside their apartment on Gaza Street.
Another bewildering remark Netanyahu made was that Iran already has nuclear weapons, and that he had twice decided to attack Iran “in order to save us from immediate annihilation by [Iranian] atom bombs.”
But both US President Donald Trump and Netanyahu keep claiming that they will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. Currently, Iran has none. So, what was that all about?
Netanyahu also repeated his proposal to form a wide national government (not a unity government, he added), including his current coalition and all other Jewish parties willing to join after the upcoming elections. He added that he is opposed to boycotts.
However, when asked whether he would be willing to join a government headed by Gadi Eisenkot, should the liberal Right, Center, and Left parties gain more Knesset seats than his current coalition members will, he answered that he would not.
Why? Because Eisenkot, according to him, is a left-winger. What about his declaration that he is opposed to boycotts?
The truth is that as long as Netanyahu’s trial isn’t over, he cannot serve as a minister in a government in which someone else is prime minister – one of the peculiarities of the Israeli political system.
But as I already noted above: not everything Netanyahu said on Channel 14 was problematic or objectionable, and as Tel-Zur stated in his interview on Channel 12: “[Netanyahu] has skills that you cannot take away from him.”
The writer has written journalistic and academic articles, as well as several books, on international relations, Zionism, Israeli politics, and parliamentarism. From 1994 to 2010, she worked at the Knesset Library and the Knesset Research and Information Center.