PM cites news chief’s offer to help rival in bid to refute favorable coverage charge
On ninth day of testimony, Netanyahu also accuses prosecutors of ‘political persecution’ for charging his senior aides with intimidating a witness in the ongoing corruption trial
Jeremy Sharon is The Times of Israel’s legal affairs and settlements reporter
The director of the Walla news website, which allegedly gave Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu favorable coverage as part of an illicit quid pro quo agreement, told Isaac Herzog ahead of the 2015 elections that he could message him “ten times a day” to ask for help during the campaign, it emerged in court on Wednesday.
Just two months before the election, Walla’s CEO Ilan Yeshua made his offer to Herzog — who was then Netanyahu’s chief political rival — and expressed enthusiasm for good polling numbers published at the time for Herzog’s party, saying he was “keeping his finger’s crossed for him,” Netanyahu’s lawyer revealed at the Tel Aviv District Court during the ninth day of the prime minister’s testimony in his criminal trial.
Netanyahu’s lawyer Amit Hadad also quoted conversations between senior staff at Walla in which they made highly disparaging remarks about Netanyahu around election time, including one in which Walla’s editor in chief said he “loathed” the prime minister, and others who called him “Kim,” in reference to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
Hadad and Netanyahu presented these details as part of their line of defense against a central pillar in the prosecution’s case against the prime minister, in which he’s alleged to have made regulatory decisions benefitting Bezeq telecoms controlling shareholder Shaul Elovitch’s business interests in return for positive news coverage from Bezeq-owned Walla.
Hadad and Netanyahu on Wednesday again focused heavily on what they argued was Walla’s regularly negative coverage of the prime minister during the relevant years in order to undermine those claims.
During the course of the hearing, Netanyahu also castigated the State Attorney’s Office for what he said was it’s past and current “political persecution” of him, and said two of his aides indicted on Tuesday on charges of witness intimidation had done no wrong.
Netanyahu was testifying for the ninth time in his criminal trial, in which he is accused of accepting a bribe in the form of positive media coverage from Walla in what is known as Case 4000, as well as fraud and breach of trust in that case and Cases 1000 and 2000. Netanyahu denies all the charges against him.
Addressing the prevailing attitude among senior Walla staff, Hadad read aloud from details of a telephone message conversation between Yeshua and Herzog in January 2015.
“Hey, congratulations on the polls, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for you,” wrote Yeshua to Herzog enthusiastically, after some favorable polls for the latter’s Zionist Union party. Yeshua went on to offer Herzog election advice, recommending he put a former senior defense official on Zionist Union’s electoral slate to boost its security credentials.
“Don’t hesitate to ask for help from me and to message me at any hour, ten times a day from my point of view,” gushed Yeshua.
“You’re going to make history and in this place and in these circumstances you will save the people of Israel, as simple as that,” he added. Herzog thanked him “for everything.”
Netanyahu asserted that despite the close support Yeshua was offering Herzog, it did not mean Herzog was taking a bribe, and that similarly any requests from himself or his associates to Walla owner Shaul Elovitch for better coverage did not mean there was anything illegal in such communications.
“To say that Elovitch’s support for me was due to an [illegal] understanding? It is not criminal, to make it criminal is the most dangerous thing for democracy. If you make relations between the media and politicians illegal then you can close the stall of democracy,” said Netanyahu.
The prime minister was referencing the claim in the indictment that Netanyahu and Elovitch came to their allegedly illegal agreement during a meeting in 2012.
Addressing the hostile attitude of Yeshua, together with Walla’s new editor in chief Avi Alkalai and its news editor Amnon Harrari, Netanyahu read from transcripts of conversations between staff in which Alkalai said he “loathed” Netanyahu, and called his 2013 government “traitorous and destructive.”
“We have here a closed system, a type of cult, which sees me as the enemy of the people. The book 1984 — that’s me, enemy of the people,” Netanyahu said of the Walla staff.
The prime minister questioned how the prosecutors could say that Walla had given him “special treatment” in light of the highly hostile attitude of its senior staff. Hadad and Netanyahu have also demonstrated repeatedly in court that Walla’s coverage was on numerous occasions extremely hostile to the prime minister.
“Yeshua sees me as an existential catastrophe to the country, Alkalai hates me, and there is Harari who cannot stop the dimensions of his hate, and this penetrates the whole outlet. A closed outlet — a cult.”
Later, Netanyahu accused the prosectors of “political persecution” against him after three of his senior aides were indicted on Tuesday on charges of witness intimidation, as well as for the indictments against him personally, something he said stemmed from his efforts to diversify Israel’s media landscape.
“I wanted to diversify the media, to balance it, not to take control of it, and then they opened up investigations against me, we’re talking about political persecution that continues until today, including yesterday, they accuse two of my spokespeople who have done nothing wrong,” fumed Netanyahu.
Ofer Golan and Yonatan Urich, who both currently serve as media advisers and strategists to Netanyahu, were indicted Tuesday on charges of witness intimidation, for having in 2019 sent a car with a loudspeaker to the home of a key witness in Netanyahu’s trial to play messages telling him to “tell the truth,” and accusing him of lying.” Also indicted in the case was Yisrael Einhorn, who served as a spokesman for Netanyahu’s Likud party
