Yotam Zimri is a popular rightist media figure in Israel where he is a panelist on the Patriots Show, a radio broadcaster and a columnist for the Makor Rishon weekly (this column was taken from the July 3rd edition and translated by Rochel Sylvetsky).
One of the problems columnists face is slow weeks like this. Not because there is nothing to write about, but because there is probably only one thing to write about, and everyone in the newspaper will be writing about the exact same topic. At my parents' wedding, Grandpa Shmuel and Grandpa Moshe both showed up in the same suit, from the same store, in burgundy. Or light blue, I don't remember. This week, the only color in the store is the Netanyahu trial.
"We're sick of it already," you say to yourselves. "Who has the energy? This trial again? What’s even going on there, which case is it, who is Friedman-Feldman?" Because that is the devil’s greatest trick: convincing you that he is boring, so you won’t remember he is the devil.
What happened this week in the courtroom was the October 7th of a crazy judicial system that chose as its goal the thwarting of the democratic choice of the Israeli voter, he who "dwells in Zion", simply because they decided to choose "incorrectly" and voted for Netanyahu. Yes, that is a cliché by now. It is a cliché because it is true. Most Israeli citizens were not astonished by the judges' recommendation to drop the bribery charge; they were in shock that the trial is still even going on.
Before the indictments were filed against Benjamin Netanyahu, every single peep from the investigation received a one-man show by Guy Peleg, every quote from the investigators got a dramatic play from Amnon Abramovich, both on Channel 12, and every state witness against Netanyahu was plastered across the front pages of the newspapers as if they were a teen idol.
The moment after the indictments were submitted and the trial began, the Israeli media decided the event was simply uninteresting. How stupid is that? It’s like broadcasting a million reports for a year leading up to the World Cup, but not broadcasting a single match.
The Israeli media, for the most part, wasn't bored by the Netanyahu trial; it simply isn't getting what it wants there, and so it hid the facts from you, the public. Even after sensational developments-like the judges asking the prosecution for the second time to reconsider dropping the bribery charge -it will extensively cover the failure of a top team in the World Cup or the mere existence of the summer vacation, while barely mentioning that "the Netanyahu trial may be shortened following the judges' recommendation."
Let the media people help me for a moment with the question that interests me: After October 7th, you loved talking about the conceptzia (the paradigm) that crashed in our faces, how flawed the conceptzia was, and how none of us must sin by harboring a conceptzia again. So what about the conceptzia that Netanyahu is guilty of bribery? After all, you didn't really doubt it. You called him "the accused," you said "this is what happens when a criminal defendant continues to be prime minister," you brought up the idea of incapacitation to get him to be deposed, you said he is forbidden from engaging in judicial reform, you said he needs to resign, leave, disappear.
So tell me, you media people who always know how to point out the mistakes of others: what about your conceptzia? Who will pay the price for it?
I always say that Channel 14 (the conservative Israeli 24-hour television news network often likened to American Fox News) was founded by two people whose names start with the Hebrew letter Mem. The first is, of course, Mirilashvili, the donor, but the second is Mandelblit, the then Attorney General who filed the indictments. The Netanyahu cases, and the conduct of the law enforcement system and the media regarding them, were the breaking point when the public understood that if those who are not viscerally against Netanyahu don't set up a microphone, they won't have a voice.
The Revolutionary Government
And what do we do now? Unfortunately, we are not a normal country, so we won't be sending undercover forces to Ben Gurion Airport to track down three people with large suitcases, wigs, camouflage gear, and strange hats, and take Roni Alsheich, Avichai Mandelblit, and Shai Nitzan, then Police Commissioner, Attorney General and State Prosecutor respectively, to be interrogated for their part in this terrible frame-up.
This is the heart of the matter-Alsheich even said it once in an interview. They are not only to blame for this case being framed, they are to blame for it being poorly framed, like a "Made in China" kind of job. But they simply thought there was no need to stitch the case together well, because Netanyahu wasn't supposed to make it to this part of the trial. To this year. To this column.
This is the chicken and the egg. Mandelblit submitted poorly framed indictments, Israelis lost their patience with the old channels running the campaign, Channel 14 was established, and Channel 14 and conservative radio station Galei Israel ensure that Netanyahu doesn't break like Begin and others did, but continues to fight instead. Were it not for the loud, vulgar, unapologetic right-wing media, Netanyahu would have been out of our lives a long time ago. That is what they tried to do. They failed.
Netanyahu will have to forgive me for his recent statements about a "broad national government"-I'm not buying it. First of all, it doesn't depend on him. He has always extended a hand for peace to the opposing camp, sometimes even leaving a party from the national camp outside just to take someone from the left. Secondly, because a broad government is nice, but I want a government that works. A homogeneous government. One that understands that Chief Justice Yitzhak Amit is a dictator, that Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara is a chaos agent, that haredim who do not study Torah need to enlist but shouldn't be incited against, that IDF soldiers don't kill babies as a hobby as leftist MK Yair Golan said, that you can't be prime minister with six Knesset seats as Naftali Bennett was, and that there is no such thing as bribery for positive media coverage which is one of the things the PM was accused of.
It's not that I'm against unity, but for the judicial revolution, we need a nationalist directed government. The upcoming government will appoint a Attorney General and nine Supreme Court judges, and that alone should be enough for any right-wing person to leave his house to vote, and for any right-wing prime minister to keep the government strictly in the hands of those who commit to dealing with the rotten judicial and law enforcement system.
For ten years we have been living alongside the "Netanyahu trial." We went through the "hand gesture," and the Noni tapes, and the leaks to Guy Peleg, and the approval from the late Yaakov Weinrot, and Amit Segal's "the ceremony is over" when Filber signed the state witness agreement, and testimony from Nir Hefetz, and a million investigators who didn't remember a single thing, and a Bugs Bunny doll which he was accused of accepting for his son, and positive media coverage turning into "unusual responsiveness" even though no one checked anyone else's responsiveness, and criminal investigative tactics, and spyware installed without authorization, and the harassment of David Sharon's mother just to get Bibi, and taking Iris Elovitch's jewelry.
And all the above is without mentioning that Prime Minister Netanyahu was conducting an existential war in which our loved ones in the IDF endangered their lives - while having to appear in the courtroom and having to request postponements from a detached court in order to make life and death decisions for Israel.
We went through such disgrace here that an acquittal is not enough for me; I want a conviction. The Right must establish a non-state Commission of Inquiry after the elections to investigate and recommend prosecuting the trial fabricators. They deserve to lose their freedom.