{"id":166112,"date":"2025-12-03T15:27:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T15:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/166112\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T15:27:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T15:27:09","slug":"netanyahus-disingenuous-pardon-request-and-how-herzog-should-handle-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/166112\/","title":{"rendered":"Netanyahu’s disingenuous pardon request, and how Herzog should handle it"},"content":{"rendered":"

This Editor\u2019s Note was sent out earlier Wednesday in ToI\u2019s weekly update email to members of the Times of Israel Community. To receive these Editor\u2019s Notes as they\u2019re released, join the ToI Community\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If Israel had term limits for its prime ministers \u2014 as it should, since too much power for too long tends inevitably to corrupt \u2014 Benjamin Netanyahu would not be on trial.<\/p>\n

The filing of the kind of charges for which he was indicted<\/a> in November 2019 would have waited until he was out of office, French presidential style<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With no term limits, Netanyahu has been able \u2014 and duly elected \u2014 to serve as prime minister almost uninterruptedly since 2009, as well as for three years in 1996-99. He has also been eligible for prosecution for alleged criminal behavior, having failed in a last-ditch pre-indictment bid to obtain parliamentary immunity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As of this week, however, he is seeking a presidential pardon<\/a> for those offenses. He has not been convicted. His trial has been in progress<\/a> for a frankly ridiculous five and a half years, with more years to go at current pace, and years of potential appeals after that. And he continues, including in his submissions for a pardon, to argue that the process in which he was investigated and indicted was illegitimate, that the charges were fabricated, and that the trial is gradually proving that they are unfounded.<\/p>\n

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Nonetheless, his very act of seeking a pardon from President Isaac Herzog would appear to constitute, at the very least, an implicit acknowledgment of offense, since, as Basic Law: The President<\/a> states, \u201cThe President of the State has the power to pardon offenders and modify sentences by reducing or commuting them.\u201d (My italics added.)<\/p>\n

If he is a self-acknowledged offender \u2014 seeking a pardon despite his simultaneous contention that the trial will vindicate him \u2014 then Herzog must treat him as such and impose the appropriate punishment, ensuring that the rule of law is applied and seen to be applied to Netanyahu as to any citizen; that justice is done and is seen to be done.<\/p>\n

Previous ministers, prime ministers and presidents have gone to jail for their offenses. In Netanyahu\u2019s case, Herzog might determine that the appropriate price, for a serving prime minister who, of his own volition, is seeking a pardon as regards alleged offenses carried out while in office, would at the very least be for him to step down from that office. He would be better off rejecting the request altogether, as the Justice Ministry will likely recommend.<\/p>\n

Departing from the norm of requests for presidential pardons, the core of Netanyahu\u2019s submission is not that he strayed and is now remorseful. Quite the contrary. It is that he did not stray, and has nothing to be remorseful about, but that the protracted trial is interfering with his capacity to devote full-time attention to his role as prime minister, and that the \u201cnational interest\u201d is therefore being harmed.<\/p>\n

He also argued that, liberated from the protracted court proceedings, he would be better able to \u201cmend rifts between different segments of the public, and open the door to lowering the flames of tensions, all for the purpose of strengthening the country\u2019s national resilience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those assertions, formulated in his lawyer\u2019s submissions as potential acts of patriotic duty, are disingenuous. Netanyahu has for years routinely demonized critics and opponents as leftist enemies of the state. He has refused to step down as the prime minister with whom the buck stops for the unprecedented failure to prevent Hamas\u2019s October 7 massacre. He is attempting to deflect all responsibility for that failure onto the military and security agencies and the High Court. He is resisting the establishment of an essential state commission of inquiry into the catastrophe. He is strategically attempting to discredit and destroy the independence and powers of the judicial system. And he is desperately attempting to maintain the unconscionable mass exemption from military service of the ultra-Orthodox community.<\/p>\n

More than any Israeli individual, it is he who bears most responsibility for fueling those debilitating rifts he says he wants to heal but proposterously claims he cannot because of the distractions of his defense.<\/p>\n

His lawyers also argued on his behalf that, free of the conflict of interest restrictions imposed upon him<\/a> as an indicted prime minister, he would be able \u201cto deal with additional issues, such as the judicial system and the media.\u201d<\/p>\n

That ostensible goodwill offer carried a whiff of menace, since it is his coalition, from almost its first day in office<\/a> three years ago, that has focused its prime legislative energies on seeking government control over the judicial system. And it is his coalition, right now, that is fast-tracking legislation<\/a> to impose political oversight on Israel\u2019s free press.<\/p>\n

His cabinet secretary indicated on Monday that his request is actually more like a demand, declaring<\/a>, \u201cThere is a greater chance of the sun not rising in the morning than the prime minister confessing to crimes he didn\u2019t commit as part of the pardon request.\u201d By extension, unnamed people in the prime minister\u2019s circle have made clear, he won\u2019t agree to an offender\u2019s punishment such as stepping down. His request for a pardon is not some kind of opening gambit, they have said<\/a>, to be followed by negotiations on its terms.<\/p>\n

What he wants is an unconditional pardon, or nothing. If it is not forthcoming, said Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman<\/a> on Sunday night, US President Donald Trump \u201cmay be forced to intervene,\u201d with \u201csanctions and other things\u201d against judicial officials. The US president exhorted Herzog<\/a> in the Knesset on October 13 to give Netanyahu a pardon, repeated the call in a letter<\/a> last month describing the case as a \u201cpolitical, unjustified prosecution,\u201d and was reportedly asked by the prime minister in a Monday phone call<\/a> to again come to his aid.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu can continue to seek to prove his innocence in court, as he insists he is in the protracted process of doing. He can also expedite that legal process, rather than dragging it out as he and his lawyers have done to date, both in the conduct of his defense and the repeated requests to cancel and scale back his appearances.<\/p>\n

Nobody has compelled him to issue a request for a pardon, implying an acknowledgement that he is an offender while insisting that he is not and indicating no readiness to face the punitive consequences. And in these circumstances, nothing \u2014 certainly not the national interest \u2014 compels the president to grant it and allow a prime minister to evade the rule of law.<\/p>\n


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