Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began his testimony at the Tel Aviv District Court on Tuesday against corruption charges in three cases brought against him by prosecutors nearly five years ago.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began his testimony at the Tel Aviv District Court on Tuesday against corruption charges in three cases brought against him by prosecutors nearly five years ago.
Netanyahu, who has consistently denied the allegations against him and denounced the move as political persecution by judicial means, remained standing and did not sit down on the defendant’s bench until the proceedings began when photographing them was not allowed.
In his opening statement, Netanyahu focused on what he called the “absurdity” of the cases brought against him, and the timing of the trial, which coincides with Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen, its fragile ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon and this week’s collapse of the dictatorship of Bashar Assad in Syria.
“I’m simply astonished by the magnitude of the absurdity. And, I must say, also the magnitude of the injustice. It’s an ocean of absurdity and I want to talk about it. I want to testify,” Netanyau said. But, he added, “I lead the State of Israel and the Israeli army on seven fronts” and “a few days ago, a tectonic thing happened here, an earthquake that hasn’t happened in a century—since the Sykes-Picot Agreement that determined the borders of the Middle East, and now it happened in one fell swoop. And this thing [in Syria] changes reality.”
Netanyahu’s lawyers have asked for several delays in his testimony, but the court rejected the latest, ordering him to appear three times a week for six hours each time.
It is the first time that a sitting Israeli prime minister has testified in a criminal trial against him.
