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by Yossi Verter,
A pardon on the terms Netanyahu is demanding would be a death blow to the judicial system and the rule of law, and would confirm his claim that a vengeful ‘deep state’ fabricated a case against him.
At the end of several catastrophic weeks in court, and after his lawyers apparently explained the severity of his situation to him, defendant Benjamin Netanyahu was pushed into the corner he always feared – seeking a pardon from the president. But as the Frank Sinatra song says, he did it his way – without admitting anything, without apologizing or expressing regret for even a smidgen of what he is charged with and without proposing any kind of penalty for himself.
Every word and letter of the request his lawyer sent to President Isaac Herzog was the complete opposite of what one would expect of a criminal seeking a pardon.
Effectively, Netanyahu threatened that if Herzog turned him down, he would be responsible for the continued rift in the nation (which Netanyahu created), for the continued overhaul of our system of government, judicial system and media and for halting or delaying one-time historic moves in the diplomatic and security realms, which are supposedly at risk only because the defendant has to show up in court three times a week (in theory, very much in theory).
This wasn’t a legal document, but a speech to his base. The claims are ridiculous. For instance, if the trial continues, Netanyahu won’t have time and energy to make peace with the entire Muslim world and continue striking Iran. But just a moment ago, Israel was fighting on seven fronts, and according to Netanyahu, it racked up dizzying achievements, of biblical proportions, under his leadership.
And what about normalization with Saudi Arabia? That requires recognizing a Palestinian state, not canceling his trial.
As is his wont, he larded his pardon request with his permanent file of smears against the legal system that dared to put him on trial. He attacked the police investigators and the prosecution, accusing them of committing crimes, thereby reiterating his original claim of a witch hunt and fabricated cases that are “collapsing” in court day by day.
In reality, it’s not the cases that are collapsing, but the defendant. In a video posted on Sunday, Netanyahu looked desperate and frightened. His confident mien and the heavy layers of makeup conceal a man fleeing a verdict. The shameful, brazen document he sent Herzog on Sunday ought to be studied in law schools as an example of how not to request a pardon.
Netanyahu also dragged his brother Yoni, who was killed in the Entebbe hostage rescue of 1976, into this swamp. Yoni has been dead for five decades, but he’s still useful for his brother’s maneuvers.
The defendant and his lawyers didn’t give poor Herzog even the thinnest thread to grasp. They know there’s no chance whatsoever that either the Justice Ministry’s pardons department or the president’s legal adviser will agree to sign off on this abomination. But in the end, it’s the president’s decision, and Herzog certainly understands his new situation very well. He’s being extorted.
Both the defendant and his lawyers presumably knew they were drafting a document that, from a legal standpoint, isn’t fit for human consumption and deserves to be thrown in the bin for unrecyclable trash. But this is his last possible escape route.
A verdict isn’t an option. Even if the bribery charge is erased, as the court once hinted it should be, there will still be three counts of breach of trust, and each on its own would involve both punishment and a finding of moral turpitude.
A plea bargain also isn’t an option from Netanyahu’s perspective, because there’s no court in the country that wouldn’t issue a finding of moral turpitude, even if the prosecution didn’t request it. And a moral turpitude finding would mean leaving public life for the next seven years.
The pardon Netanyahu is seeking for himself has no precedent anywhere in the world. If he had admitted to something, expressed regret and promised to leave political life and not run again, then there would be something to talk about. But resignation alone would be a joke.
In that case, Justice Minister Yariv Levin would serve as prime minister for a while (which would be no better and maybe even worse than having Netanyahu). And then Netanyahu would run again – as a victim, as someone who was persecuted but then pardoned and “acquitted,” and who therefore deserves compensation.
Granting any kind of pardon that doesn’t meet the above conditions would deal a death blow to the prosecution, the courts and the rule of law as a whole. It would ratify the claim that a corrupt “deep state” is running things, that it decides whom to indict and whom to let off based on political considerations and that it takes revenge on people who don’t do its bidding. There would no longer be a legal system after such a decision.
Consequently, Herzog presumably won’t accede to this request. He is by nature a formalist, a man who cares about proper procedure.
But it’s highly unlikely that he will succeed. And in any case, any deal that doesn’t include Netanyahu giving both an oral and a written promise, in his own voice and his own hand, to immediately leave political life won’t hold water (and even then, it’s possible that any such promise would be broken the moment the pardon is granted because “the people should decide”).
In another month, it will be exactly three years since the judicial overhaul effort began. It was born as vengeance for the indictment against the king. This desire to take revenge, to destroy, to raze the legal system and the democratic system to their foundations, hasn’t abated for a minute. Quite the contrary. The pardon request merely reinforces it.
Source: https://www.haaretz.com
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