Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finally began testifying against longstanding corruption charges against him on Dec. 10, the first time an Israeli prime minister has taken the stand as a criminal defendant.
He faces charges of fraud, breach of trust, and accepting bribes in three separate cases.
The trial began in 2020 and has gone on for more than 1,600 days.
The court has heard from many other witnesses, but not from Netanyahu.
He is accused of accepting tens of thousands of dollars worth of cigars and champagne from a billionaire Hollywood producer in exchange for assisting him with personal and business interests.
Netanyahu is also accused of promoting advantageous regulation for media moguls in exchange for favorable coverage of himself and his family.
As testimony continued on Dec. 11, protesters and counter-protesters demonstrated outside the Tel Aviv courtroom.
The country has been deeply split over whether Netanyahu should stay in office with the charges pending against him.
Netanyahu, 75, denies wrongdoing, saying the charges are a witch hunt orchestrated by a hostile media and a biased legal system out to end his lengthy leadership.
His testimony caps years of scandals that have swirled around him and his family.
“I have waited eight years for this, to tell the truth as I remember it,” he said.
According to Netanyahu, the accusations against him are an “ocean of absurdity.”
“Nothing is proven here in court,” said Amit Haddad, Netanyahu’s lawyer in opening remarks.
“The irregularities in the indictment indicate two things: the prosecutor’s lack of evidence, and that the police did not investigate a crime, they investigated a person.”
“The prime minister will speak without filters,” he said.
To Netanyahu’s critics, the trial is a litmus test for democracy: a chance to see whether a sitting prime minister, who has refused to resign, can be held accountable for crimes he is accused of committing in office.
To his supporters, it constitutes an attack on democracy: an attempt by the country’s liberal establishment to oust Netanyahu on spurious legal grounds after failing to do so at the ballot box.
Netanyahu, managing Israel’s longest large-scale war now being waged on seven fronts—and on the shortlist for Time magazine’s Person of the Year award—began testifying on Dec. 10.
A second day of testimony on Dec. 11, in an underground Tel Aviv courtroom before three judges, was halted briefly while he dealt with national matters, then resumed.
His lawyers have asked that he be able to receive notes during the trial.
The hearing was moved from Jerusalem, where the trial usually takes place, at the security agency Shin Bet’s request.
The trial will take up a significant amount of Netanyahu’s working time.
Testimony is set to go on for six hours a day, three days a week for several weeks. Critics ask whether he can meanwhile run the country, including the war.
The court rejected a request by Netanyahu’s lawyers to reduce the length of testimony, as well as several requests to delay the start of the trial due to Netanyahu’s busy schedule and the country’s grave challenges.
A verdict isn’t expected until at least 2026.
Since the trial began in 2020, the court has heard prosecution witnesses in the three cases, including some who had been among the prime minister’s closest aides.
Netanyahu has been cleared in a fourth case, concerning the government’s procurement of German-made submarines.
Netanyahu, as he began testifying, said the indictment’s characterization of himself and his family as “hedonists” was “absurd.”
He said he works 17 to 18 hours a day, eats meals at his desk, and goes to sleep at 1 a.m. or 2 a.m., rarely seeing his family.
He said he doesn’t like champagne and, while he likes cigars, rarely has the chance to smoke them because of the demands of his job.
Netanyahu has begun by answering open-ended questions from his own attorneys and to answer the charges against him.
Prosecutors will then begin their cross-examination of him.
In one case, prosecutors say he authorized regulatory benefits for an Israeli telecom magnate, Shaul Elovitch, in return for favorable coverage on Elovitch’s news website Walla. Elovitch, also on trial, has denied wrongdoing.
Netanyahu dismissed Walla as a “negligible” website, one whose coverage he wouldn’t bother to try to influence.
And to the contrary, he said, he tried to find buyers for Walla after Elovitch declined to steer the paper, which he had acquired from a left-wing publisher, in a more right-wing direction.
Among those interested, he said, was the late American casino mogul Sheldon Adelson.
He disputed signing off on regulatory changes specifically to favor Elovitch, saying he simply signed documents civil servants had presented to him.
And, he said, he favored reforming Israel’s internet market in ways that would have hurt Elovitch’s Bezeq company, which held a monopoly on the nation’s internet infrastructure and then owned Walla.
Asked by Haddad how the reforms against Bezeq “sit with the idea that you had a ‘give and take’ relationship with Elovitch,” Netanyahu says it proves that he had no such relationship with the media mogul.
“I was advancing a reform that would do severe damage to Bezeq. This totally contradicts that theory, it collapses it. The allegation collapses, it is as clear as day,” he says. “It [an agreement] never happened and this is the proof.”
He says he backed then-communications minister Gilad Erdan’s attempt to break the monopoly and did not pressure Erdan to benefit Bezeq.
Netanyahu is also accused of receiving gifts of champagne and cigars from Hollywood mogul Arnon Milchan and billionaire James Packer over several years.
And in another case, he is accused of trying to influence coverage in a leading daily, Yedioth Ahronoth.
He allegedly discussed with its publisher, Arnon Mozes, a scheme in which Mozes would give him better coverage.
In return, Netanyahu would try to limit the circulation of the competing newspaper Israel Hayom, despite its being owned by Adelson, Netanyahu’s longtime patron.
With two of the cases involving media coverage, Netanyahu said he has sought to “diversify” Israel’s media to include more right-wing outlets.
