Five years after his criminal corruption trial began, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finally entered the witness box this week — not as Israel’s most powerful man, but as a defendant facing cross-examination. Just don’t call it justice.
On 3 June 2025, prosecutors began questioning Netanyahu in Case 4000, the most serious of the multiple charges levied against him. The case alleges that he granted regulatory favors to Israel’s largest telecom conglomerate, Bezeq, in exchange for positive coverage on its subsidiary news site Walla!
→ https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-856423
→ https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-06-03/ty-article-live/five-years-after-criminal-trial-began-netanyahu-faces-first-day-of-cross-examination/00000197-349a-d9f1-abb7-7cfe61600000
For years, Netanyahu evaded direct testimony, using legal appeals, coalition collapses, and even a global pandemic as convenient speed bumps. But the delay tactics ran out. Prosecutors finally got to ask the questions Israel’s democracy had been waiting to hear: Did Netanyahu trade national telecom policy for personal PR? And if so, who still believes he governs with a mandate?
The court proceedings have been tightly controlled — no live feed, minimal press access — but leaks describe Netanyahu as “combative,” at times dismissive of the judges’ questions, insisting that any media bias was the result of “natural admiration.”
→ https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/prosecution-begins-cross-examination-of-netanyahu-at-criminal-trial/
This isn’t just about a corrupt deal. It’s about a system of narrative control — a leader manipulating regulation, industry, and perception as tools of office. It’s Case 4000 on paper, but it’s Case Zero in principle: power reshaped to protect power.
What makes this spectacle more farcical is that Netanyahu remains in office. While other democracies demand resignation at indictment, Israel’s political machinery has normalized prime minister by day, defendant by schedule.
Supporters paint him as a survivor. Detractors call it state capture. Both are right.
Even now, Likud loyalists use the trial to rally the base, spinning the judiciary as a “deep state.” Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s government continues to pass legislation that weakens court oversight — including attempts to override Supreme Court rulings and disempower the Attorney General.
→ https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/israeli-prime-minister-s-corruption-trial-enters-decisive-phase-as-cross-examination-begins/3587798
The man on trial controls the law that tries him.
In any functioning justice system, that’s a conflict. In Israel 2025, it’s a re-election strategy.
And when the verdict finally comes — if it ever does — Netanyahu won’t be the only one judged. So will the courtroom that let him govern from the dock.