Judicial overhaul champion Rothman says Netanyahu trial motivated him to join politics

By Sam Sokol 10 December 2024, 5:34 pm

6 Edit

Sam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"

MK Simcha Rotman, head of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, leads a committee meeting at the Knesset in Jerusalem, on December 9, 2024. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Religious Zionism MK Simcha Rothman, the chairman of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee and one of the architects of the government’s judicial overhaul program, tells lawmakers that the corruption cases against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were part of the reason he ran for a parliamentary seat in the first place.

During a hearing on a bill limiting the uses to which the Bar Association can raise money through membership fees, Rothman rails against “a biased and political system” whose violations of suspects’ rights have “mobilized support for the campaign to reform the judicial system.”

Rothman claims that opposition members who had previously supported reforms are now against them because the legal system “turned its attention to Netanyahu, their political opponent,” drawing angry responses from opposition lawmakers.

The presence of government ministers and coalition MKs at Netanyahu’s trial “is an embarrassing and strange phenomenon,” counters Yesh Atid MK Yoav Segalovich.

“This is not a trial against the Likud or a political party, but about bribery and breach of trust.”