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Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu is on trial, Fox News tells us, for “accepting gifts from Israeli Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan in exchange for advancing his interests, failing to report a bribery attempt from newspaper ‘Yediot Aharonot’ publisher Arnon Mozes, who wanted Netanyahu to allow a bill to pass outlawing free newspapers and offered him favorable coverage in exchange, and accepting an offer in which Shaul Elovitch, the owner of Israeli telecom conglomerate Bezeq, would grant Netanyahu favorable media coverage in exchange for favorable regulatory changes.”
Netanyahu has asserted that the charges are false, highly inflated – and political. Netanyahu’s political enemies have been gunning for him for decades.
It will all come out in the wash, political cynics believe. But there is a great deal of dirty linen in the wash tub. Consider the title and then the lede to the Fox News story: “Netanyahu knocks Obama, John Kerry in first appearance at corruption trial: The Israeli prime minister said Obama offered him a secret visit to Afghanistan.”
The lede to the story arrests the attention of the reader: “In his first appearance in court for corruption charges, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu laid bare his stark disagreements with former President Barack Obama over Iran and a Palestinian state.”
As always, Netanyahu is quotable: “Obama made it clear to me that U.S. policy was going to take a sharp turn against the ideas I believed in.. He saw Iran not as a threat but as an opportunity and saw a vital need for us to return to the '67 lines and establish a Palestinian state here… I had to face great pressure to create a Palestinian state. [Obama] demanded it during the first meeting, he said: 'Not even one brick will you build over the Green Line.' I responded: 'Half of Jerusalem is over the Green Line; for instance, the Gilo neighborhood.' Obama said: 'Gilo too.' He demanded a total construction freeze, massive pressure. I had to deal with this, I had to deflect it, and it was no small matter."
Obama’s Secretary of State, John Kerry, the heroic “Winter Solider” of Vietnam, was his usual blustering self. Kerry was at the time “urging Israeli forces to withdraw from Judea and Samaria,” Fox News’ formulation. “Kerry explained to me,” said Netanyahu, “that my fear of placing security in Judea and Samaria in Palestinian forces' hands was unfounded because the Americans were training Palestinian forces and we could withdraw… Obama suggested I make a secret visit to Afghanistan to see how American forces were training local forces. I told him the moment you leave Afghanistan, these forces will collapse under Islamist forces, and that's exactly what happened."
No one can plausibly argue that Netanyahu’s reaction to the Afghanistan invite was off-base. Following President Joe Biden’s premature and hasty surrender of Bagram Air Force Base to the Taliban and the President’s withdrawal of intelligence to the “local forces” trained by Americans, the Taliban were instantly victorious. Lately, the lame duck president and his media supporters were astonished at the swift defeat of Bashar al-Assad’s army in Syria.
Assad has taken refuge in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and the rout followed Netanyahu’s military victories over the enemies of Israel: Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Iranian mischief throughout the Middle East. When Hezbollah fell, the walls of Iran came tumbling down. And it was not Biden, or Kerry, or Obama who was responsible for the welcome turn of events in the Middle East.
That was Netanyahu’s doing, and he was operating outside the limits of the usual foggy-bottom do-nothing strategy.
“Gentlemen may cry, ‘Peace, Peace,’ but there is no peace” Patrick Henry’s declaimed at the Second Virginia Convention in March of 1775. Henry lifted the quote from Jeremiah 6:14: “They dress the wound of my people with very little care, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace at all.”
"The real threat to democracy in Israel is not posed by the public’s elected representatives,” Netanyahu said in a statement on Thursday, “but by some among the law enforcement authorities who refuse to accept the voters’ choice and are trying to carry out a coup with rabid political investigations that are unacceptable in any democracy,"
Chief political analyst for Israel's Channel 12 Amit Segal added the following gloss: “Netanyahu is on trial for allegedly using his political power to improve his media coverage. His defense: the coverage was not positive but hostile, and I did not attempt to change it for the benefit of Netanyahu the citizen but for the benefit of the State of Israel in response to Obama’s hostile stance."
