Happy New Year!
After several riveting weeks of testimony from Nir Hefetz, a former fixer for the Netanyahu family, who is remembered mostly for his ruthless reign over Jerusalem, and who was by far the most eagerly awaited witness for the prosecution, Benjamin Netanyahu’s trial is on recess this week.
I think it is worth summarizing the trial thus far, and making note of what can only be described as a catastrophic year for him, legally and otherwise.
But first, I want to ponder the fate of Elizabeth Holmes, who’s just been convicted of fraud. I followed coverage of her trial fairly closely, and listened regularly to a number of podcasts that provided almost live reporting, and throughout, much was made of the defense’s argument that the investors who sustained Theranos had no one to blame but themselves for their losses, since they obviously hadn’t performed necessary due diligence. Much was made of the patients whose lives were upended by Holmes’ false claims about Theranos’ capabilities. Extraordinary attention was paid to her own testimony, her charm, her assertions that she only meant well.
Netanyahu is no sexy young entrepreneur. He’s a grizzled veteran statesman whose verdict will be rendered by a three-judge panel, not by a jury. But the dry, rational outcome to a media circus of a trial may provide us with useful guidelines for viewing the current proceedings.
In the end, despite pervasive speculation about the jury’s expected lack of sympathy with whiny millionaires, the breathless treatment of Holmes’ charisma, and skeptical analyses regarding the relative impotence of the lowly employees who undid the entire enterprise—rationality won out.
The California jury turned in an eminently sensible verdict, in which Holmes was held responsible for defrauding investors—some of her investor calls had been recorded—was not held responsible for damage done to patients, with whom she had no direct contact, and the whistleblowers are bathed in an heroic aura.
She faces many years in jail.
For the average Israeli, and even for much of the local media, Netanyahu’s trial provides a steady background clamor and a memento of the constant melodrama that surrounded him like Pigpen’s dust cloud. (Any Peanuts fans here?) Beyond a few diehard Bibistes, I am not sure how many people are really paying attention.
Much of this substack will address the divergences between coverage of Netanyahu’s trial and the proceedings in court. These are two different universes, one raucous and bizarre, the other levelheaded and judicious.
But for now, let us begin by reviewing Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2021. He rang in the year as probably the most powerful prime minister in Israeli history, even if by January, following three elections he called and failed to win, it was clear that he no longer enjoyed massive public support.
It ended in a shambles, with Netanyahu uncomfortably in the opposition and his erstwhile top consigliere, now acting as state’s witness, depicting him day after day, from the stand, as the head of a criminal empire whose sole raison d'être it was to keep him in power, no matter the cost. (Here is my story about Netanyahu’s terrible, no good, awful, 2021.)
Last month, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, the Netanyahu appointee who ended up indicting the then-prime minister, and who is weeks away from retirement, was quoted making the extraordinary assertion that Netanyahu himself, as prime minister, “constituted a danger to democracy” comparable to those which have crushed the rule of law in Hungary and in Poland.
Netanyahu's plan, Mandelblit said, was to take over the nation’s centers of power by appointing loyalists to key offices in all the institutions of state, notably the Supreme Court, which “would have caused us to fall apart from inside.”
In the next post, to put things Netanyahu in perspective, I’ll detail a few of the uncountable setbacks and embarrassments he’s suffered just in the past weeks, but for now, I’ll end with a humorous, telling anecdote.
To wish his followers a happy new year, Netanyahu posted a video in which he appeared alongside one Semion Grafman, an obscure internet celeb who’s served time in US federal prison for money laundering. The video in fact opens with a weird Grafman howl, supposedly a laugh, that sounds more like a piercing animal shriek.
Netanyahu joshes around with Grafman about his successor Naftali Bennett’s “Soviet Israel.”
My take on it: The fact that Benjamin Netanyahu was incapable of wishing the world a happy 2022 without bringing a criminal element into it, or without casting out absurd, outlandish, ridiculously false accusations, says something about the world he inhabits.
Thank you for reading. More soon.