Israel's self-destructive legal pursuit
Requiring the prime minister to spend three days a week in court, six hours each day, plus countless preparation hours, is a luxury Israel cannot afford during wartime.
Nadav Shragai
Israel Hayom
Dec 20, 2024
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends his trial on corruption charges at the district court in Tel Aviv, Israel, Monday, Dec. 16, 2024.
Historical comparisons are often deceptive. Benjamin Netanyahu is neither David Ben-Gurion, nor Mattathias of Modi'in, nor even Mordecai of Susa. Nevertheless, during his watch and under his leadership, alongside the horrific Oct. 7 massacre, a series of tectonic events are now taking place that are transforming world orders: rising from rock bottom and the depths where we were just 14 months ago – to peaks of victory no one dreamed possible. From threats of annihilation reminiscent of 1948 and the Arab armies' invasion of the Land of Israel 77 years ago – to victory on the scale of the Six-Day War and the War of Independence.
These extreme and sharp changes correspond with similar extreme and sharp transformations in our history as a people. Think about the reversal of Haman's decree, or about "the many into the hands of the few" (Al HaNissim Hanukkah prayer) and the Maccabees' victory during Hanukkah. Like it or not – Netanyahu is now successfully leading and managing an event of biblical proportions that history has presented to him, and it doesn't really matter if the stars aligned for him or if he's the one aligning them.
What could change this is the insistence on interfering with him and us, dragging him and us to this embarrassing and utterly unnecessary spectacle at this time in the Tel Aviv courthouse, without understanding that the rule of law and equality before it can be deferred and can wait a bit longer. The trial's end isn't visible on the horizon anyway, and requiring the prime minister to spend three days a week in court, six hours each day, plus countless preparation hours, is a luxury Israel cannot afford during wartime.
For those who struggle to grasp the magnitude of this absurdity, please give your imagination some freedom. Imagine David Ben-Gurion trudging weekly to court after the invasion of Syrian, Jordanian, Iraqi, and Egyptian armies into the Land of Israel. Or Mordecai in simulation games with his attorney, while needing to address the annihilation decree hanging over his people. Or even Judah the Maccabee in a similar situation, taken from the helm during battles against Antiochus' forces.
Is this conceivable? The prosecution, in the name of "public interest" as they interpret it, has decided that in our era this is indeed conceivable, because Netanyahu's trial is a paramount "public interest," and let justice pierce through us all.
Netanyahu, contrary to his statements, is not omnipotent. He now must split his attention, focus, availability, and energy between two sets of demands. On one hand, he must address historical allegations: his connections with the "Walla" website (one of Israel's largest news portals), the campaigns of his Likud party and the Jewish Home party (a religious-nationalist party) in 2013, the quantities of cigars and champagne bottles that arrived at his home legally or illegally some 15 years ago, and his relations with Yedioth Ahronoth's (Israeli newspaper) publisher Arnon Mozes over a decade ago.
On the other hand, he must simultaneously handle critical current challenges: clarifying matters with Trump's America toward possible fateful joint action against Iran's nuclear program, arranging Israel's relations with new allies in the new Middle East, and removing Iranian militias from state borders.
Netanyahu, contrary to common sense, must now split his time and capabilities between managing critical negotiations for a hostage deal, preventing Iranian weapons smuggling to Judea and Samaria, contacts with Putin's Russia on matters better left unsaid, and soon, perhaps, even a normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia – while reconstructing regulatory actions that allegedly benefited Bezeq communications company years ago.
For such a situation, the Hebrew slang word "tarlelet" (madness) was probably invented, though even this word is too small for what is happening now. Those who should have acted and initiated the trial's postponement are not Netanyahu, but rather his judges, the Attorney General and the prosecution itself, or the president of the state of Israel in the role of a responsible adult. This is their country too, isn't it? It belongs to all of us. Isn't optimal leadership during an ongoing war, while the new Middle East takes shape before our eyes, also in their public interest? So what went wrong in their worldview and perception of reality that they don't understand this?
We live in a strange and deranged era, where hatred of Netanyahu and the aspiration for his downfall or bringing him to justice blinds the eyes of many, creating a "take everyone down with me" mentality. Former State Prosecutor Moshe Lador's statements, calling on reserve pilots to stop volunteering for the IDF if judicial reform laws are passed, belong to the same deranged behavior.
The IDF, after all, is not an army that protects the regime – it protects the state, society, and its residents. In October 2023, Hamas and Hezbollah attacked the residents of the Gaza envelope and the State of Israel, not Netanyahu's regime. Is a former state prosecutor unable to distinguish between the two?
Moreover: if today, after 14 months of fighting, when it's already clear to everyone what central role reservists threatening to withdraw their voluntary service played in the enemy's decision to attack Israel, the same rhetoric of non-compliance from Oct. 6, 2023, is being pulled out again by opponents of the judicial reform – one can only conclude that something central in their understanding of reality has gone awry.
Similar declarations before the war helped cook up the enemy's decision to attack us on Oct. 7, 2023. In March 2023, a Gaza newspaper described "chaos in the Israeli military" in the form of "threats by intelligence reservists... to stop serving, alongside pilots' announcement about ceasing activity." The writer concluded that "The threats negatively affect the occupation army's readiness for combat." In April, the same newspaper quoted Major General Yitzhak Brik, who claimed that the reservists' refusal to report for reserve duty was dismantling what remained of our motivation and fighting spirit.
Palestinians
break into the Israeli side of Israel-Gaza border fence after Hamas
terrorists infiltrated areas of southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
During that period, Hamas' official newspaper reported on "dozens of pilots, officers, and elite unit personnel in the IDF who announced they wouldn't carry out military missions," and later, that "refusing pilots are adding fuel to the fire of Israeli polarization." Mohammed Balama, a Jordanian journalist and former editor of Al-Diar, assessed against this background: "Signs are multiplying for the departure of the Third Temple once again, once and for all." Ismail Haniyeh spoke about the window of opportunity that Hamas must exploit, and Saleh al-Arouri said that resistance organizations should take advantage of Israel's internal division and advance the battle.
In a major investigative article in January, Israel Hayom described in these pages how Hamas and Hezbollah fantasized about the "Altalena emerging again off Tel Aviv's shores," and how terrorist organizations became convinced that Israel had become an autoimmune state losing control of itself. If Lador and his associates aren't completely detached from reality, they should be familiar with this, and remember that threats like those heard here this week have already led to severe consequences.
Both the insistence on continuing Netanyahu's trial at this time and the statements by Lador and those like him continue to erode broad public trust in the justice system, its judgment, and its motives. This erosion of trust is inseparable from the broader dispute over judicial reform. We've been too quick to forget the dangerous path we were on. We must remember those dark days – to ensure we never return there. Never.
No comments:
Post a Comment