E10 — The Netanyahu Investigations Continued
Hi everyone and welcome to The Israel Podcast. I’m your host Avishay Ben Sasson Gordis. Before we begin, I have a small request. If you enjoy listening to the podcast, consider rating it on iTunes, and maybe even dropping a comment. I recently found out that ratings seriously affect whether or not people are exposed to certain podcasts, so if you feel like this podcast deserves a word from you, I’d love for you to give it. And now back to the talking about Israeli politics.
In the previous episode I surveyed the expanding cloud of criminal concerns regarding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his confidants. In the meantime, several things have happened, and the question of should or shouldn’t Netanyahu be required to resign if indicted has become more pressing. So on this episode I’ll be talking a little more about the Netanyahu Investigations, what’s been happening with them, and what their political fallout might look like.
As you might remember, some of Netanyahu’s closest advisors including his personal and political attorney who’s also his cousin, David Shimron, are involved in a graft case surrounding the purchase of submarines from a German corporation. Furthermore, the man Netanyahu appointed as undersecretary of Communications, is now suspended and under investigation for serving the interests of a billionaire who controls Israel’s largest telecom company, and was close with Netanyahu. A news website controlled by that same billionaire provided Netanyahu with very positive coverage prompting the at this point unsubstantiated suspicion that Netanyahu’s undersecretary wasn’t chosen at random and that his collusion with the billionaire was not entirely random. On the personal front, Netanyahu’s wife is involved in a set of cases that implicate her in improper use of public funds, and the expectation is that she will be indicted soon. Finally, Netanyahu himself is suspected in misconducts in two cases, generally referred to as cases 1000 and 2000.
In case 1000 he is suspected of receiving “gifts” worth many thousands of dollars from wealthy Israeli and foreign citizens, including alcohol and cigars. The police has been trying to establish if there was any give and take with those benefactors that might amount to bribery. Case 2000 centers around recordings of Netanyahu in discussions with the publisher of Yediot Ahronot, Noni Mozes in which the two discussed a possible deal. The supposed deal would have Mozes’ paper turn into a vehicle of support for Netanyahu, and in return Netanyahu would limit the publication of Israel Hayom, a freely distributed paper funded at a loss by US billionaire Sheldon Adelson in order to promote right wing politics and Netanyahu personally, that has been steadily eating at Yediot Ahronot’s profits and influence.
To understand just how scandalous these recordings are, you need to know that right around the time in which they were made, Netanyahu’s rivals were advancing a bill that would prevent Israel Hayom from operating the way it had, leading Netanyhau to call an election to prevent the bill from passing. Israel Hayom habitually referred to Yediot as Noni’s Empire of Evil . When it turned out that Mozes and Netanyahu were actually negotiating a marriage of convenience, the shock was equivalent to what you would get if it turned out that the New York Times and Trump’s recurring spats are actually a clever ploy to boost ratings for both.
But how did the police come into possession of these recordings? The answer is they were recorded by Netanyahu’s chief of staff at the time, Ari Harrow. Harrow is a 42 year old American born political consultant who immigrated with his family to Israel when he was 12. For years Harrow worked for the Likud party and for Netanyahu personally. As part of this, he served as Netanyahu’s Bureau Chief between 2009 and 2010 and he returned to Netanyahu’s service as Chief of Staff between 2014 and 2015. In late 2015 he was arrested under the suspicion that as the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff he continued to covertly and illegally operate a lobbying firm. During his investigations, his phone was searched and the recordings of Netanyahu and Mozes were seized leading to a separate investigation against Netanyahu.
In recent weeks, several things happened with these investigations to push them forward, but I’ll focus only on two of these developments. First, the police requested a gag order from the courts regarding the investigations against Netanyahu, that stated officially for the first time that he is under investigation on counts of bribe and breach of trust. Up until that point, it was assumed that that was the direction in which the investigation was headed, but it was only a rumor. Now it’s official. Second, the state prosecution signed a state-witness agreement with Harrow. Harrow, who managed many of Netanyahu’s connections with donors and attended some of the meetings with Mozes will provide information, presumably on Netanyahu’s actions and in return he will not serve prison time for his crimes. Instead he will pay a large fine and will do six months of community service. Netanyahu himself continues to insist that nothing will come of any of the investigations.
The recent developments led to an intensification in weekly public protests outside the home of the Attorney General who is also the Head of the Prosecution in demands that he expedite the investigations of Netanyahu. In response, the Likud (Netanyahu’s party) and its Knesset members organized a contra protest in the same area. The height of the response by the Netanyahu’s loyalists to the growing discussion of this alleged corruption was an event held in Tel Aviv last week. Thousands of Likud supporters showed up to hear Netanyahu giving a speech in which he blamed “the media and the left that serves it” of conducting an “unprecedented witch hunt” against him and his family with the aim of preforming a “coup d’état”. He argued that the left and the media, which he called “one and the same” are pursuing a legal vendetta against him because they are unable to unseat him democratically, and because he refuses to withdraw from territories and advance a compromise with the Palestinians.
Setting aside the inaccuracies of the speech and the unrestrained delegitimization of opposing views and of the media in Netanyahu’s speech, he is actually making an argument that is worth dwelling. As Netanyahu stated in problematic terms, and as other Likud members and right wing pundits pointed out, there is room to ask if legal proceedings should be able to depose an elected head of state. Presumably, the people who elected the chief executive should be allowed to choose as their representative whomever they want. As a result, prominent politicians from Netanyahu’s party and its coalition partners have made it clear that they do not expect Netanyahu to resign even if he is indicted. Although, many of the same people called on Netanyahu’s predecessor Olmert to suspend himself, and even resign altogether, even before he was indicted. So while those politicians may have a point, they are also probably at least somewhat opportunistic. But before I explain why I think their point is mistaken, and even a Prime Minister should resign when indicted, let me first explain what the law has to say about this.
Legal precedent in Israel requires the Prime Minister to fire a minister who has been indicted, without waiting to hear what the court’s verdict is going to be in their case. However, when it comes to the Prime Minister himself, the law requires no such thing. The law states that if the Prime Minister is convicted, a majority of Knesset members may vote to remove him, and if the verdict becomes final (presumably after a failed appeal), the government will be considered to have been dissolved. This is not a mistake on the part of the law. Since the Prime Minister’s resignation dissolves the government by Israeli law, the legislator chose to put off his required resignation to the last possible point in the legal process. Notice that this law permits investigations against an acting Prime Minister, and even court debates. This law was never put to the test, since Olmert’s coalition partners decided to demand that he resign before an indictment was served to him. Without a coalition, an Israeli Prime Minister is no longer a Prime Minister anyway, so the discussion of legal requirements became kind of a moot point.
But now, Netanyahu’s partners are either quite on the matter or openly stating that he shouldn’t resign, and the law is on their side. So why is it that I think that he should resign if indicted? My first reason has to do with the political morality of it. While criminally speaking public officials are innocent until proven guilty, from a public standpoint they can be expected to conform to a higher standard of behavior, and the evidence against Netanyahu is such that he has already shown to be lacking several virtues that the public can expect in its officials.
But, you may ask, the public has shown repeatedly that they want Netanyahu as Prime Minister. Well, that’s not exactly precise. Netanyahu’s party, the Likud, has a quarter of the seats in the Knesset. And Netanyahu himself was not elected directly by the quarter of the voters that voted for his party. He was elected as head of the Likud by a few dozen thousand members of the party. This isn’t to say that he isn’t a legitimate Prime Minister, on the contrary. Only that the process that led him to that position is not such that we can easily claim that him personally being the Prime Minister is the purest expression of majority rule. At best, we can say that the Likud can choose a replacement for him, as the law allows to do, and demand that he step down.
In staying the Prime Minister while under investigation, Netanyahu has an interest to use his bully pulpit to preach against law enforcement authorities and delegitimize those who oppose his actions. This is not merely a hypothetical. In his speech in Tel Aviv last week he did exactly that. Instead of protecting the institutions of which he is in charge, he undermines them. By protecting allegedly corrupt officials we are also incentivizing such corruption and then the use of office to escape judgement.
And finally, if it does turn out that he was falsely accused, which seems highly unlikely given how hesitant law enforcement organizations were to move forward when they had the slightest doubt regarding his actions, his return will be immensely powerful. So for all of these reasons, I believe that if indicted, Netanyahu should resign. And while I hope this is the last time Israel confronts the reality of a Prime Minister being indicted, I will take the same position in the future since the health of our democratic institutions is more important than almost any action a specific individual might be able to take.
That’s it for this episode. Thank you again for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, consider rating the podcast on iTunes and subscribing to it. In the meantime I invite you to continue the conversation on the podcast Facebook page at facebook.com/theisraelpodcast or on soundcloud.com. A full text version of the episode is available on the medium.com page of the podcast. You can also follow me on twitter @avishaybsg and on my personal Facebook page.
