Netanyahu tells court he got ‘special hostility’ from Walla, ‘not special treatment’

On the third day of his testimony in his criminal trial, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted time and again that he had no connection to repeated requests from a friend of his wife’s to slant the news coverage of the Walla website toward him, but that the website was in fact especially hostile in its coverage of him and the Likud party.

Monday’s hearing revolved solely around Case 4000, the most serious of the three cases against Netanyahu, in which the prosecution alleges that the prime minister accepted a bribe in the form of positive news coverage from telecom mogul Shaul Elovitch, Walla’s owner, in exchange for advancing regulatory decisions that benefited the latter to the tune of NIS 1.8 billion shekels.

During the six-hour hearing, Netanyahu’s attorney Amit Hadad combed painstakingly through examples of media coverage by Walla cited by the indictment, in an effort to demonstrate that either there had been no need for Netanyahu to intervene, or that the news site had been unresponsive to requests for better coverage, or that the coverage was not only unfavorable to the prime minister, but hostile and worse than other news outlets.

Hadad pointed out that of the 22 examples listed by the prosecution for 2013, Netanyahu was not questioned or asked for his response to any of them during the interrogation conducted by the police before he was indicted.

At one stage during the proceedings, after Hadad covered several examples brought by the prosecution, Judge Rivka Friedman-Feldman, the lead judge in the case, expressed impatience with the pace of the attorney’s primary questions, asking him if he intended to cover all 315 examples in the indictment.

But Netanyahu was insistent that it was important to address the examples in detail and not just have him deny his involvement, saying that such forensic analysis was raising “opposite evidence” of Walla’s hostility, not favor, toward him.

Just after midday the court agreed to hold a closed-door session to review Netanyahu’s request to cancel Tuesday’s scheduled hearing, with the judges eventually agreeing to it.

The development followed the first signs of impatience demonstrated by the state with the notes that are periodically handed to the prime minister by his staff for apparently urgent matters, when following the only such incident on Monday the prosecution said that a formal mechanism should be set up to arrange such matters.

A ballistic missile launched at Israel from Yemen in the afternoon did not interrupt the proceedings, which are being held in an underground courtroom in the Tel Aviv District Court that is considered to be a protected space.

Netanyahu insisted throughout the day that all the dozens if not hundreds of requests from his wife’s friend Zeev Rubinstein to Walla CEO Ilan Yeshua to change the site’s coverage for the benefit of Netanyahu were either Rubinstein’s own initiative or came from his wife, Sara, through Rubinstein and then to Yeshua, without the prime minister’s knowledge.

Netanyahu also repeatedly asserted that he would have had no need to make requests through Rubinstein, since he could have spoken with Elovitch directly himself, as he did with Israel Hayom owner, Sheldon Adelson, and the paper’s editor, Amos Regev, on numerous occasions during the period covered by the indictment.

The prime minister also insisted his wife did not discuss any requests she may have made through Rubinstein.

“My wife is an independent person; she has her own opinions. I imagine that Rubinstein spoke with her,” said Netanyahu when asked whether he discussed such issues with her.

Hadad focused on the period leading up to the 2013 election, by which time, the prosecution alleges, Netanyahu had already formed an illicit quid pro quo with Elovitch, the existence of which the prime minister strongly denied and referred to in court sarcastically as “that telepathic agreement.”

He also detailed various media items in Walla in that period that were either hostile to Netanyahu or favorable toward his right-wing rival Naftali Bennett, including a rather fawning interview in which Bennett was asked softball questions about his dedication to the country.

“This contradicts what Rubinstein was requesting,” said Netanyahu, and alleged that Walla’s coverage was actually slanted toward Bennett, not himself. “This proves what I said: Walla was serving Bennett’s campaign. It was a disciplined effort by Walla for Bennett’s campaign.”

Hadad also focused on an incident in the election campaign in which Bennett’s Jewish Home party posted campaign posters around the country bearing a picture of Netanyahu and Bennett.

The Likud party appealed at the time to the Central Election Committee asking it to order the party to take down the posters, a demand that the CEC upheld.

The indictment alleges that Netanyahu was personally involved in requesting that Walla cover the ruling, and that Elovitch dealt with it personally, but Netanyahu pointed out that the ruling was widely covered by all mainstream media outlets, as it was an important campaign development.

Hadad also noted that Walla’s article went up after midnight, long after other outlets published it, that it was published as a brief update and not a full article, and that that it was taken off the news site’s homepage shortly afterward.

“Everyone published it. Saying that Walla publishing this was ‘special treatment’ is absurd,” Netanyahu declared.

“Why didn’t they check this? Is this bribery?” he fumed, alleging that the investigators and prosecution were either culpable for “negligence or malice” for such an allegation.

He also pointed out that the incident took place four days before the January 22, 2013, election, asserting that if he had an agreement for favorable coverage with Walla, it would have been a good time to publish a full article detailing the setback for his rival.

“Is this the bribery? This nonsense is what they have trolled an entire country with? This is their evidence?” Netanyahu demanded of the judges directly.

Hadad and Netanyahu went through a similar process regarding another example in the indictment, in which it was alleged that the prime minister was personally involved in requesting that Walla cover a tour of Jerusalem the he conducted the day before the election, during which the city’s mayor, Nir Barkat, publicly endorsed him.

Despite the prosecution saying that the request, which allegedly came from Rubinstein, was “granted,” Walla again published only a news flash item while other sites covered the events more expansively, Hadad pointed out.

“Presenting this as special treatment doesn’t accord with reality,” declared Netanyahu.

“Your honors, it’s pathetic. It’s absurd” he said, addressing the judges directly, as he has taken to doing on numerous occasions during the hearings.

Netanyahu also insisted that the issues on which Rubinstein made requests to Yeshua, the Walla CEO, were trivial and unrelated to the Likud party’s core campaign issues.

“Maybe they interested my wife, maybe he [Rubinstein] thought they interested my wife,” he speculated.

Hadad also pointed out that during the course of 2013, Netanyahu conducted two meetings and three phone calls with Elovitch, but fully 126 phone calls with Adelson and Regev of Israel Hayom.

“This shows a connection [with Elovitch], which is unusual in how negligible it is, and the strong connection with Israel Hayom because [that news outlet] really reflects the ideology of its owners,” argued the prime minister.

Another key incident raised by Hadad was the indictment’s allegation that Netanyahu was directly involved in a request for Walla to change its coverage of his swearing in ceremony in the Knesset after the election, when Sara Netanyahu wore a dress that was supposedly somewhat see-through.

Walla published a negative article saying that Netanyahu’s ultra-Orthodox political allies had been angry about her dress and accused her of “disgracing” the event.

Netanyahu described the article as “the most negative framing possible” and said Ynet, Globes, and other outlets had covered the ceremony “properly and even favorably.”

Hadad also pointed out to the judges that when leader of the Shas ultra-Orthodox party Aryeh Deri publicly criticized the attacks on Sara Netanyahu over her dress, Walla did not publish an item on Deri’s comments, despite Rubinstein requesting of Yeshua that it do so.

“Almost every example of the prosecution shows not special treatment, but special hostility,” insisted Netanyahu.

The charges

Netanyahu is on trial in three corruption cases. He faces charges of fraud and breach of trust in Case 1000 and Case 2000, and charges of bribery, as well as fraud and breach of trust in Case 4000.

Case 1000 revolves around allegations that Netanyahu and his wife Sara received expensive gifts illicitly from Hollywood media mogul Arnon Milchan worth some NIS 700,000 and that Netanyahu violated conflict of interest laws when he provided Milchan with assistance in renewing his long-term US residency visa and sought to help him with tax issues.

In Case 2000, the prime minister is accused of fraud and breach of trust over his alleged attempt to reach a quid pro quo agreement with the publisher of the Yedioth Aharaonot newspaper Arnon (Noni) Mozes, whereby Yedioth would give the prime minister more positive media coverage in exchange for legislation weakening its key rival, the Israel Hayom free sheet.

Case 4000, also known as the Bezeq-Walla case, is the most serious the prime minister faces, in which he is accused of authorizing regulatory decisions that financially benefited Bezeq telecommunications giant shareholder Elovitch by hundreds of millions of shekels. In return, Netanyahu allegedly received favorable media coverage from the Walla news site, which Elovitch also owned.

Netanyahu denies wrongdoing and says the charges were fabricated in a political coup led by the police and state prosecution.