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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favorite tales on this weekly publication.
A defiant Benjamin Netanyahu denounced Israel’s media and prosecutors after he lastly took the stand in his long-running corruption trial, deriding the proceedings as a harmful distraction from the nation’s wars within the Center East.
The prime minister’s look, the primary of what might find yourself being weeks of questioning, befell after repeated authorized wrangling by his staff designed to forestall him from being known as on to testify. Proceedings started in 2020 however had been lengthy delayed by Covid, authorized manoeuvring and the wars in Gaza and Lebanon.
Netanyahu’s harshest home critics have accused him of extending the battle in opposition to Hamas in Gaza to delay at the present time of reckoning, whereas his supporters have demanded that he be unencumbered in an effort to lead the warfare effort.
The prime minister, who was charged with bribery, fraud and breach of belief in three complicated, overlapping felony instances centered on his relationships with rich enterprise folks, tried to ascertain within the courtroom what he has alleged for years: {that a} left-wing media and prosecutorial cabal was engaged in a “ruthless witch-hunt”.
Prosecutors allege that Netanyahu accepted costly presents comparable to champagne and cigars from rich pals in return for favours, and in different situations, supplied regulatory benefits to media shops to win beneficial protection. He has denied all the fees.
The hours of testimony on Tuesday barely touched on the info on the coronary heart of the case, nevertheless. As a substitute, Netanyahu’s attorneys led him by means of a line of questioning through which he introduced himself because the harangued chief of an embattled state, who labored 17 hours a day to maintain Israelis secure whereas combating off lies and libel from journalists.
“I took criticism and assaults, insults, libel and lies, in a scope that only a few folks, and nobody in Israel has ever confronted,” he stated. “There has by no means been such a biased media in any democracy, presumably in any nation on Earth, as there may be in Israel.”
His meandering testimony swung between essential world occasions — from the 1916 Sykes-Picot Settlement that partitioned the Center East between western powers to Netanyahu’s 2015 break with then US president Barack Obama over Iran’s nuclear programme — and the mundane.
The prime minister mentioned his work habits, the variety of paperwork he signed a day and the uncommon cigar he permits himself however, he stated, he by no means has an opportunity to complete.
“Typically I sin with a cigar that I can’t even smoke in peace due to the fixed interruptions,” he stated. “And by the way in which, I hate champagne.”
The trial has convulsed the nation’s politics, triggering a number of elections and has pitted Israel’s longest-serving premier — who started his first of a number of phrases in 1996 — in opposition to a judicial system he has sought to tame by means of controversial reforms that triggered mass avenue protests.
Netanyahu, who has grow to be more and more reliant on the assist of far-right political events to remain in energy, suffered a dramatic drop in reputation over his failure to forestall the October 7 2023 shock raid by Hamas, through which the Palestinian militant group killed 1,200 folks.
Israel’s subsequent offensive in Gaza has killed greater than 44,000 folks, in response to Palestinian well being officers, and Netanyahu’s home approval scores have improved because the nation landed devastating navy blows in opposition to Hamas, Hizbollah in Lebanon, and Iran.
The testimony is ready to show extra confrontational within the coming days when prosecutors are lastly in a position to query him concerning the proof they’ve collected in multiyear probes.
These embody allegations that Netanyahu and his spouse Sara had been plied with a whole bunch of 1000’s of pricy presents, and that Netanyahu supplied a commerce to a newspaper writer through which he would obtain beneficial protection in alternate for serving to dent a rival newspaper’s circulation.
However on the primary day of the trial that would resolve not simply his political future, but in addition his private freedom, Netanyahu unveiled a authorized technique that mirrors his political persona: that of a person who has sacrificed a lot for the nation, now the topic of a witch hunt that locations Israel itself in danger.
Throughout his quick stints out of workplace, Netanyahu stated: “I loved journeys, meals, even made a great dwelling.” However then, he instructed the court docket, he was known as again to serve Israel. “I went again to the coal mines.”
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