On the day that closed out Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s testimony in Case 4000 of his criminal trial hearings, Netanyahu and his team stuck to the defense line taken all along in this case: That not only was the treatment of Walla towards the prime minister not positive, it was pointedly negative, rendering obsolete the claim of a bribery scheme.
The prosecution levied 315 items of evidence against the prime minister. His testimonies touched on both of those fields: the alleged preferential treatment from Walla, and his regulatory decisions that were allegedly favorable to Bezeq; both Walla and Bezeq were owned by Shaul Elovich, who was accused of bribing the prime minister.
At one particular point, Netanyahu raised his voice: “I can't deny myself the frustration; I have been sitting here for 10 years over idiotic press statements – and this is bribery?” Netanyahu said. Turning to the judges, he noted, “This is not a show. I have to explain to the Israeli public this charade, and I don't have a reasonable answer for them. What are we dealing with here? This is absurd!”
Lead defense attorney Amit Hadad addressed several such examples laid out in the charges that allege coverage requests by Netanyahu.
Several were made from Ran Baratz, a former media adviser to the Prime Minister’s Office, to former Walla CEO Ilan Yeshua, regarding content changes or inquiries. Netanyahu said he had no connection to these requests, that he was too busy with other things, wasn’t updated, or that any messages that were sent to Walla were routine public relations statements and not anything out of the ordinary.
Netanyahu's alleged experience with Walla
Presented with the claim that Baratz requested from Yeshua that Walla cover a government meeting in Haifa, Netanyahu said he wasn’t involved and that he wasn’t even updated on the coverage request. “I was busy dealing with more important things,” he replied.
When presented with a different request to publish an article on Walla, Netanyahu said, “I have no idea. I felt that Walla was problematic and harsh [in its coverage of me], but I didn’t know how bad it was until now [the trial].”
He continued, “Walla was always difficult – this is what the evidence is suggesting, that it was hard to get requests in. This doesn’t happen in any other news outlet.”
Netanyahu said in previous testimonies that at his hearing that he found Elovitch too afraid of Walla staff and leadership to push them to change news coverage, though the owner himself held different beliefs than Walla. “Walla could’ve been an influential site, but it wasn’t,” Netanyahu said on Wednesday. “Elovich didn’t want to take that route, for a variety of reasons, but he didn’t.”
In August 2015, Netanyahu flew to Italy. Hadad presented a coverage request by Zeev Rubinstein via Nir Hefetz, a former Netanyahu aide who later became a state witness. The request, according to the charges, went to Shaul Elovich’s wife, Iris, who is accused of assisting in the bribery scheme, and from there on to Yeshua.
“I am not involved in any of these requests,” the prime minister said. “I don’t tell them what to do. There is a generic announcement of routine schedule information that goes out to everyone; it is procedural instructions that the media team deals with,” he explained.
“This whole notion that I got involved in coverage requests is ridiculous, and in any case is not something I deal with. Calling up people that are in charge of media companies is routine,” he added.
“This entire indictment has no basis in reality, it’s all fake. This is bribery, fraud and breach of trust?” he asked, referring to the three charges levied against him.
Around November 2016, the National Security Council stated that the purchase of the submarines from Germany was not due to any outside pressures. The charges against the prime minister allege that this statement was published on Walla with a push from Yeshua and with Elovich in the loop.
This is in reference to what later became known as the ‘submarine affair,’ a series of arms deals between German shipbuilder ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems and Israel. The first deal was for three submarines, while the second was for missile ships. The suspicion at the time was that Netanyahu pushed the deal along against the judgement of the defense establishment.
“Walla’s coverage of this case was negative… For me, this was of utmost importance – I was being displayed as a traitor, as though I cut a shady deal to financially profit from.”
“The assumption is that I am guilty until proven innocent,” the prime minister summed up. “You investigated me, you studied me – you saw how my regulations created a more competitive market… look at the buildings around us.”
He added, “It is valid to ask how things worked back then, at the crossroads between journalism and politics. But this? This is insane.”
Next week, testimonies for Case 1000 will begin, in which Netanyahu is accused of having a conflict of interest when he was communications minister and received gifts from businessman Arnon Milchan, in exchange for assistance
