From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, December 10, 2024
PM says he was ‘astonished’ to be indicted on charges of attempting to control media
Jeremy Sharon is The Times of Israel’s legal affairs and settlements reporter
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he was “astonished” when he was told he was being investigated over allegations he attempted to improperly use his position to gain positive media coverage.
“I was astonished when they asked me in the investigations, I said, ‘Are you serious? This is in the indictment? The most basic democratic thing? The obligation to diversify different markets? That is seen as criminal?'” Netanyahu says during testimony on his corruption trial. “I said, ‘You are disconnected.’”
Netanyahu says he first met Shaul Elovitch, the former head of telecommunications giant Bezeq, which owns Israeli news outlet Walla, “in 1996 or 1997… I met with economic leaders, he was among them. I didn’t know him personally, but I tried to give everyone a chance to speak.”
“It wasn’t personal familiarity, it was distant familiarity,” he says. “A tight relationship was not formed. Cordial relations were formed, but not beyond that.”
In one of the three cases against Netanyahu, he is accused of authorizing regulatory decisions that financially benefited Elovitch in exchange for favorable media coverage from Walla.
