On eve of court testimony, Netanyahu pans legal system, media in heated press conference
‘I’ve waited 8 years to present the truth,’ says PM, denying effort to evade justice; says ‘everything goes in the effort to bring down Bibi’; berates reporters for ‘spreading lies’
Hours before the start of his testimony in his corruption trial on Tuesday morning, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dedicated much of a televised press conference on Monday night to castigating the legal system over the investigations that led to the charges, and to attacks on some of the journalists asking him questions.
Netanyahu, who is on trial in three corruption cases, made no mention of the court proceedings in his opening remarks at the press conference — the first he had given in over three months — in which he focused on the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, Israel’s wars against Iran its proxies, and efforts to free Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. But he unleashed a bitter assault on the legal system, law enforcement, media in general and specific reporters during the subsequent question and answer session.
Asked whether he believed he would be given a fair trial, he eschewed a direct answer and instead delivered a lengthy, passionate and seemingly pre-prepared rant, rejecting the idea that he has been trying to delay and avoid the proceedings.
“What lies,” he fumed. “Eight years I’ve been waiting for this day. Eight years I’ve been waiting to present the truth. Eight years I’ve been waiting to puncture for good the wild and ridiculous accusations against me. Eight years I’ve been waiting to expose the method, a cruel witch hunt… There was no crime, so they looked for a crime. They didn’t find a crime, so they concocted a crime.”
Netanyahu, who has consistently denied the charges as unfounded and charged that he is the victim of a witch-hunt, moved on to castigate the law enforcement agencies that have put him in the dock.
“They arrest dozens of people around me, they ruin their lives, they extort them with threats so they’ll give false testimony… isolation, sleep deprivation,” he said angrily. “Everything so that they give false testimony.
“And if this doesn’t work, they use surveillance — surveillance they use against the worst terrorists. They strip them of all their privacy. And they say to them, think about your families, they won’t have an income. Scaring them, threats: We’ll take everything from you. Forging minutes. Getting rid of exculpatory evidence. Criminal leaks from the interrogations. And endless brainwashing of the public.”
“That is the method,” he asserted. “Not only in my interrogation. That is the method.”
Netanyahu’s lawyers have repeatedly sought to delay his testimony, noting the burden on the prime minister amid the ongoing multifront war.
Members of Netanyahu’s cabinet earlier Monday called on the Jerusalem District Court, in vain, to delay Netanyahu’s testimony because of developments in Syria, with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich going so far as to claim later in the day that the judges were “harming national security” by rejecting the request.
Netanyahu himself said he was not asking for special treatment, but “I shouldn’t have fewer rights,” and asserted that it was extraordinary that he was being called to testify three times a week. “The entire public knows what is right,” he said.
Nonetheless, Netanyahu insisted he was relishing the prospect of giving evidence in his defense. “I don’t want to talk? Tomorrow, I speak. It’s not me who’s dodging.”
He then turned on Israeli media for ostensibly avoiding reporting on Israeli law enforcement’s alleged determination to do everything to force him from office, and declared: “I expect you to not dodge [reporting my testimony] tomorrow and in the coming days. When I speak, cover it fairly for once. Let’s see you do it.”
Netanyahu had combative exchanges with reporters from both the Kan public broadcaster and Channel 12 news.
“How much fake news can you make up?” he asked Kan’s Michael Shemesh, in response to a question asking why the premier once offered to give up the Golan Heights in exchange for a peace deal with Syria. Netanyahu said there was no deal with Hafez al-Assad in the 1990s precisely because “I insisted on remaining in the Golan.”
“I’ve listened enough to your lies. Now listen to the truth,” he said to Shemesh. “You’re spreading lies all the time.”
To Channel 12’s Yollan Cohen, after she implied he got in the way of a hostage deal with Hamas, Netanyahu made sure the cameras were still running, then said: “You spread this slander all the time — that there was a deal, and I blocked it.”
When she tried to respond, he pointed at her and said: “You for one minute listen to me! You listen to me. Because the Israeli public, because the families hear these lies [in your reporting].”
Cohen attempted to highlight that she spoke to families who he met with in two separate meetings on Sunday and that they told her he said different things to them about the prospects of a deal. He interjected that “it’s hard for you to hear the truth,” before his spokesman moved the press conference on to the next question.
Later, he said, “The quantity of lies that are disseminated is so vast and so relentless. I give credit to the citizens of Israel: I wouldn’t be standing here if they believed all the falsehoods disseminated by the media and political opponents. They see the truth.”
In response to another question, regarding the indictment of his aide Eli Feldstein and an unnamed IDF reservist for the theft and leaking of classified IDF intel, he again denounced the media for purportedly lying about that case, and repeated allegations he made nine days ago that the two suspects were treated in a “shocking manner” by Shin Bet investigators — handcuffed and blindfolded like terrorists. As with the charges in his trial, he said, the investigators probing Feldstein pressured him to “give us something on Netanyahu” and treated him harshly so that he would do so.
He continued attacking law enforcement by protesting last week’s arrest of Israel Prison Service Commissioner Koby Yaakobi in an ongoing case. Yaakobi “is threatened by crime families; his small children are threatened by crime families,” said Netanyahu. And yet, Yaakobi was arrested last week because “everything goes, in the effort to bring down Bibi.”
“I think it’s awful. It’s not acceptable in a democratic state,” he said.
He also dismissed the notion of recusing himself as prime minister during his trial, declaring, “recusal does not exist” as a possible course of action, since he was elected by the people and “that’s the basis of democracy.”
Lapid: Selfishness, lies; Gantz: Crushing the justice system
Responding to Netanyahu’s remarks, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid accused him of being focused on himself rather than on the nation he leads.
“In a day when four soldiers were killed in the north and three in Gaza, Benjamin Netanyahu is only concerned with one thing: himself. It was a shameful speech of ‘me, myself, and I,'” Lapid argued.
“Anyone who wanted to know why a person under indictment cannot be prime minister had only to watch his press conference tonight,” said Lapid. “It was a shameful collection of lies and stealing credit for the achievements of the security establishment, which acted heroically despite the weakness of his leadership.”
“His victim blaming and false claim that he waited eight years for his testimony is a bad joke,” the Yesh Atid party chairman added, claiming that Netanyahu has used “every trick possible, kosher or not,” to delay his testimony.
“The State of Israel will do just fine without him in the face of the security situation. If he weren’t there, we wouldn’t be in this situation at all. He is to blame for the October 7 attacks, he is to blame for the war, he is to blame for the fact that the kidnapped people have not yet returned,” charged Lapid. “He is guilty of establishing a government of messianic extremists that is tearing apart Israeli society. He is not contributing to national resilience, he is its biggest problem.”
“Let him go, let him stand trial like any other person. If he wants to, let him make a plea bargain. The main thing is that he gets out of our lives and lets the State of Israel come back to life and return to sanity.”
The left-wing Democrats party chairman Yair Golan also slammed Netanyahu for complaining about his press coverage while Israeli soldiers are dying in Gaza. “A hundred Israeli women and men are held hostage by Hamas. The worst security failure in the country’s history, and the prime minister whines about the media and his criminal trial,” Golan tweeted. “It is a shame for the country that this is what its leader looks like. He will be replaced very soon. That’s a promise.”
National Unity chairman Benny Gantz declared that Israel deserves a prime minister who “gets upset when he talks about our hostages and victims, and not when he is asked about himself.”
“Because of his corruption trial, “Netanyahu is crushing the justice system and society as a whole,” Gantz added.
Union slams anti-media “incitement”
Meanwhile, the Union of Journalists in Israel denounced Netanyahu’s anti-media rhetoric. It “strongly condemns” Netanyahu’s “attack and incitement against journalists who are carrying out their work and public mission,” the organization stated, stressing its support for Shemesh and Cohen.
“The role of the media is to ask the prime minister, every prime minister, difficult questions,” the union said, also taking issue with the fact that Netanyahu at one point joked that allowing a journalist from the pro-Netanyahu Channel 14 to ask two questions rather than one constituted baksheesh or bribery.
Shortly before Netanyahu’s press conference, and after the court had refused ministers’ request to delay his testimony, Justice Minister Yariv Levin denounced the entire prosecution of the prime minister as illegal and harmful to Israeli security.
“The legal proceedings against Prime Minister Netanyahu, even from the investigation stages, have been one long saga of shameful and illegal conduct, and of abuse of legal proceedings,” charged Levin. “Today, it becomes clear that nothing will stop this, not even the need to ensure the security of the state.”
Haaretz reported on Monday that Netanyahu contacted ministers and lawmakers from his Likud party and asked them to gather on Tuesday morning at the Tel Aviv District Court building, where his testimony will be held. The hearings were moved from the Jerusalem District Court building because of security concerns.
