The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, may seem too cunning to be thought the hero of a tragedy, but the criminal charges laid out against him last week, by the attorney general, Avichai Mandelblit, reveal nothing if not hubris. In the three cases in question, Netanyahu allegedly offered lucrative government favors to counterparts who were already rich. In two of them, the benefit he intended for himself was rigged media coverage, which he did not need; in the third, it was for luxuries that he already could afford. Playing to type, he also seems willing to abuse the power of his office in order to stay in it, further undermining democratic norms. The general election is on April 9th, and his reëlection campaign has been based largely on mobilizing his supporters against Israel’s Arab citizens. Now he is pivoting, Trump-like, to defame and undermine the criminal and judicial institutions that produced the charges against him. In a televised address last Thursday night, he said that Mandelblit had simply caved to “inhuman pressure” from “the media and the left wing.”
The attorney general has actually brought “indictments pending a hearing” against Netanyahu, which means that he will hear the Prime Minister’s defense, against the evidence accumulated by the police and the state prosecutor, before deciding whether to file the indictments and take them to trial. Only Netanyahu seems confident that the charges will be dismissed.
The provisional charges entail fraud and breach of trust, for trying to get the Israeli Finance Ministry to extend a tax break to an Israeli Hollywood mogul, Arnon Milchan, and for pressuring the U.S. State Department to give Milchan a visa extension. Netanyahu received gifts of wine, cigars, and jewelry from Milchan. (Milchan said that he did not expect anything in return.) The gifts, the charges allege, were not random shows of admiration: they were delivered on a schedule, in the course of a decade, with the assistance of the Australian tycoon James Packer (who has also denied any wrongdoing), and were worth some two hundred thousand dollars. (According to Forbes, Netanyahu has assets worth more than thirteen million dollars.)
Separate charges of fraud and breach of trust address Netanyahu’s secret negotiations with Arnon Mozes, the publisher of the centrist, secular newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. The charges allege that Netanyahu wanted favorable coverage from Mozes, and Mozes wanted to curtail the success of Israel Hayom, a free rival paper that the American casino magnate Sheldon Adelson founded, in 2007, largely to promote Netanyahu’s campaign for office. Netanyahu allegedly suggested to Mozes, among other things, that he wouldn’t get in the way of pending legislation that would have made the free distribution of certain types of newspapers illegal. The talks—recorded on the smartphone of a Netanyahu aide who turned into a state witness—and the law both came to nothing, and the two have denied any wrongdoing. (Curiously, the attorney general did not raise the issue of whether Adelson’s paper should have been considered an illegal foreign campaign contribution.)
The odd part is that Netanyahu never was at risk of suffering a drop in popularity precipitous enough to require Yedioth Ahronoth’s fawning. He had long established himself as the favorite of a majority rightist and theocratic base, who also appealed to a younger generation that had grown up under the bloody second intifada. When he came to office in 2009, he inherited a resilient entrepreneurial economy. His strongman defense of the status quo against both Iran and the Obama Administration’s peace initiatives was pretty much all the policy he needed. Moreover, he had devoted friends among diaspora plutocrats, powerful allies in the Republican Party, and the tacit support of AIPAC leaders. His government controlled a public radio-and-television authority and set regulations for rival broadcasters. His legal manipulations of the media might have provided him leverage enough against his critics.
All of which makes the most serious charges against Netanyahu the more confounding: bribery, fraud, and breach of trust for awarding regulatory favors, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, to the Bezeq media group—again, to secure more favorable coverage, in this case from Bezeq’s popular Web site, Walla! (Yedioth Ahronoth reported that Shaul Elovitch, Bezeq’s chairman at the time, was recorded telling the Web site’s C.E.O. that positive coverage would change Bezeq’s fortunes and interests.) Netanyahu’s actions, Mandelblit wrote, “were carried out amid a conflict of interests, the weighing of outside considerations relating to his own and his family’s interests, and involved the corrupting of the public servants reporting to him.” (Last year, a spokesperson for Elovitch said that he “categorically denies the suspicions against him.”) What Mandelblit couldn’t say was that Netanyahu’s actions didn’t advance any manifest need—unless one defines political power as an agonal rivalry with élites whom one must both control and outshine.
Apropos Netanyahu’s “family’s interests,” Mandelblit has kept silent about an even more serious pending case, which may never produce legal jeopardy for Netanyahu but has already produced political jeopardy. This concerns his role in naval procurements, in 2017, which reportedly profited, among other intimate associates, his cousin and lawyer David Shimron. Netanyahu allegedly overrode established bidding processes and disregarded plans recommended by the general staff of the Israel Defense Forces. (Both Netanyahu and Shimron have denied any wrongdoing.) The consequent protestations of Moshe Ya’alon, a former I.D.F. chief of staff who was then serving as the Defense Minister, prompted Netanyahu to replace him with Avigdor Lieberman, a controversial far-right politician who had no relevant experience. That act prompted Ya’alon to leave Netanyahu’s Likud Party, and alienated much of the country’s military and intelligence community. In a way, it was the moment that catalyzed what has become Netanyahu’s political nightmare: the creation of a centrist party led by trusted security officials. Two weeks ago, Ya’alon joined two other former chiefs of staff, Benny Gantz and Gabi Ashkenazi, to form, with Yair Lapid, the head of the centrist party Yesh Atid, the Blue and White party.
Mandelblit publicly struggled with the question of whether, in view of next month’s election, releasing the “indictments pending a hearing” would constitute undue political meddling by police and judicial authorities. He apparently decided, much like James Comey did, that to delay action or to hold back would itself constitute meddling. In any case, the charges do not mean that Netanyahu is now required to step down from the leadership of the Likud. It would mean a constitutional muddle if, as seems plausible, Netanyahu wins reëlection, goes through hearings, and is then indicted. An accused Prime Minister is not required to resign, though both Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Olmert did, and for lesser offenses committed before they entered office. And the Supreme Court has ruled that an ordinary minister, if indicted, does have to resign. Yet, for now, the half-dozen parties that make up the Likud’s governing bloc are rallying behind Netanyahu. Losing the levers of government to a secular centrist party would be a disaster for them.
None of this means that Netanyahu has not been wounded. The charges seem more sordid in the black-and-white of the prosecution documents than they did in the whispered leaks of colorful pundits. Polling conducted by major television channels after the charges were announced show Blue and White winning a half-dozen more Knesset seats on April 9th than the Likud. More important, in the polls, the Likud’s bloc now falls just short of a Knesset majority. The finance minister Moshe Kahlon, the leader of Kulanu, one of the parties on which the Likud relies, is hinting that he would entertain joining a government led by Blue and White.
And Netanyahu is acting wounded. His address last Thursday was a study in carefully modulated pathos. He began by touting what he sees as his diplomatic indispensability: his recent meeting with the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, who allegedly (dubiously) signed off on Israeli military actions against Iran in Syria; his support from Donald Trump, who, upon hearing of Netanyahu’s contretemps, said, “He’s tough, he’s smart, he’s strong.” Netanyahu urged that his personal relations with world leaders are “not to be taken for granted.” Nevertheless, he said, his voice gently cracking, state prosecutors were out to get him, while the press “was also spilling the blood of my wife and my son.” (Four years ago, the press reported, Netanyahu’s son Yair was recorded outside a Tel Aviv strip club badgering the son of a natural-gas tycoon about a loan for a prostitute. “My dad arranged twenty billion dollars for your dad,” the younger Netanyahu said, referring to legislation on the distribution of natural-gas revenues, “and you’re whining with me about four hundred shekels?”)
The defiance, though, may not play with Netanyahu’s erstwhile admirers. Polling conducted by the Times of Israel on the eve of the indictments found that, “if charges are announced,” more than a quarter of those who had planned to vote for the Likud would not. Then again, defiance is Netanyahu’s brand. His supporters admire his strength, his spite. Mandelblit has handed him a new foil.
