Charges against Netanyahu: another coup?
Lawfare against Netanyahu has gotten to the point of this indictment:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been indicted on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit announced Thursday, prolonging the country’s political uncertainty as it looks set to head into its third national election in a year.
Netanyahu, who has denied any wrongdoing and said he is the victim of a “witch hunt,” faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of bribery and a maximum 3-year term for fraud and breach of trust, according to legal experts.
“I give my life to this state, I fought for it, I was wounded for it. I have to say this is a very hard day,” Netanyahu said in a nationally televised address on Thursday night. “I think you need to be blind to see that something wrong is going on. This is a political coup.”
If it sounds familiar, that’s because it is. The main differences between what’s happening to Trump in the US and what’s happening to Netanyahu in Israel (besides the details) is that in the US the process is being handled by the correct mechanism for removing a president, impeachment (even though it’s being undertaken in a partisan and unfair manner), and in Israel the removal is being attempted through the court system.
In the US, although a president can be sued civilly while in office – a SCOTUS decision with which I have always disagreed – he or she cannot be criminally indicted. So although a US president can be impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate, a single unelected prosecutor cannot charge him through the court system.
It turns out that is true in Israel as well; an Israeli PM has immunity from prosecution. No Israeli PM has ever been criminally charged before. But the prosecutor in the Netanyahu case is asking that the Knesset waive Netanyahu’s immunity:
Mandelblit will now ask the Knesset to waive Netanyahu’s immunity, a process which can take 30 days.
Frequently, indicted MKs waive their immunity sooner, but Netanyahu has been trying to delay any impact on his power from the indictment process and may try to draw out the process longer.
This seems wrong to me, because it open up any Israeli PM to a politically vengeful indictment.
As for the charges against Netanyahu, although this article by Alan Dershowitz is from last March, it explains them quite well [emphasis mine]:
The first charge relates to the receipt of gifts — cigars, Champagne, jewelry and other items often gifted by friends to friends. If Netanyahu received a dozen cigars and bottles of Champagne and a few pair of cuff links from a friend who asked him to do the kind of favor politicians are often asked to do for constituents, no one would accuse him of a crime. But because the prosecutor believes he took too many of such items — the value, it’s said, comes to hundreds of thousands of dollars — he is being prosecuted.
But how much is too much for purposes of criminalizing gifts and favors? Where is the precise line one must willfully cross to make such gifts a crime? There is no written law or regulation that expressly states how much is too much…
No one in a democracy should have to guess where the line is that separates questionable actions from crimes. Netanyahu is being charged with guessing wrong.
The second and third charges share a fundamental flaw in that they seek to criminalize normal political behavior: Efforts by politicians to secure fair or positive media coverage, or minimize negative coverage, in exchange for particular votes or actions.
Netanyahu is being charged with accepting (or discussing accepting) the “bribe” of better coverage. But if seeking, accepting or expecting better media coverage were an element of crime, there would not be enough prisons in Israel or any other democracy to house the number of politicians who voted a certain way or who did certain favors with the expectation that it would improve their coverage by the media…
The larger point is that Israel has vague, elastic and open-ended criminal laws that can be stretched to target political opponents. So does the United States. In our country, such laws include obstruction of justice, conspiracy and witness tampering, as we have seen in the ongoing investigations of President Trump. In Israel, these include breach of trust and bribery — the crimes with which Netanyahu is being charged.
the precedents the attorney general is establishing will lie around like a loaded gun, ready to be picked up and misused for partisan advantage in future cases. Weaponizing accordion-like criminal statutes in the context of partisan politics threatens democracy, the rule of law, and in the case of the Netanyahu charges, the freedom of the press.
A fundamental question in any democracy is whether a single individual — in this case an appointed attorney general — should be empowered to make decisions that may thwart the will of the voters.
It’s an easy question for me to answer, and the answer is NO.
[ADDENDUM:I found the cursory of treatment of immunity and Knesset waiver in that article rather odd. It seemed as though a fuller explanation of the mechanism should have been offered, but there was just that brief mention without hardly any explanation at all.
So I decided to dig deeper just now, and I found that apparently the article misstated the situation, as best I can determine. In fact, the default position is not immunity from prosecution for a PM, but the Knesset can vote to grant immunity. Quite the opposite of the statement in the originally quoted article, which is somewhat puzzling.
That may explain why the charges have been filed at the present time. This is the situation and the timing, in more detail:
Netanyahu has 30 days – until December 22 – to ask the Knesset to grant him immunity from prosecution.
Under normal circumstances, when an MK is charged with a crime, the attorney-general must submit a copy of the indictment to the Knesset. Then the MK may go to the Knesset House Committee seeking immunity. At that point, the legal proceedings against the MK are frozen and Mandelblit cannot submit the indictment to the courts.
The House Committee would then vote, and if it grants the lawmaker immunity, it must go to a second vote in the plenum.
But these aren’t normal circumstances, and a vote on immunity for Netanyahu is unlikely to take place in the next six months, putting the prime minister’s trial on hold.
There have not been regular Knesset committees in almost a year, since the 20th Knesset was dissolved in December 2018. We’re now on the 22nd Knesset, and the election was over two months ago, but there still is neither an opposition nor a coalition to decide who heads which committees, and who sits on them.
More at the link.
So it appears that the prosecutor is taking advantage of the complete disarray of the Knesset due to the election results being so close that no one is in control. And it appears that the default position is no immunity for a PM. And it also appears that instead of waiting for a pending election, the prosecutor (one person) is going forward to try to finesse the upcoming election.]
That’s what I’ve been thinking.
And then Volodymyr Zelensky .
Lefties in Israel taking tips from US Lefties.
Just when I think I have cured my conspiracy theory tendencies, something like this happens coupled with Trump’s impeachment.
“Lefties in Israel taking tips from US Lefties.”
Soros giving direction.
Just when I think I have cured my conspiracy theory tendencies
Not to mention the uprising in Hong Kong, and a bipartisan condemnation, that threatens to delay or abort negotiations that would, ideally, mitigate the progress of labor, environmental, and monetary arbitrage games played by globalists, anti-nativists, transhumanists, diversitists, that favor China (positive) and America’s (negative) progress
If the Knesset must waive Netanyahu’s immunity first, then the Israeli system has a built-in procedural barrier to the problem of a single individual overturning the will of the people with a politically vengeful indictment.
Firstly, it takes much more than a single individual to do this. Secondly, the Knesset represents the will of the people too. So much for the first two prongs.
Now, the indictment may still be politically vengeful. But you have to weigh that against other overarching principles…such as no one is above the law.
This procedure would I would think, at the very least, weed out blatant political prosecutions.
First, this phrase “no one is above the law” in practical terms means that we are all subject to the whim of an increasingly arbitrary (legal) system that we have no control over.
Second, laws are made by human beings. The humans that make the laws and carry them out are no better or impartial or just than any other human beings.
Third, why doesn’t the phrase “no one is above the law” apply to prosecutors and judges. Why aren’t judges whose decisions are overturned kicked out of the profession? Why aren’t prosecutors held personally liable for their misconduct?
https://spectator.us/trump-netanyahu-will-win-again/
Dominic Green’s article in Spectator USA.
“… in the US the process is being handled by the correct mechanism for removing a president… ”
A Star Chamber is not “the correct mechanism for removing a president.”
“… the answer is NO”
Of course it is. Only a Stalinist would even think up such a question.
Brexit, Trump collusion and then impeachment, Netanyahu, the French yellow vests, Hong Kong, Iran … there is a lot of “regular people who just want to live their lives” vs “government elites lording their power and correcting your Wrongthink” going on around the world.
Seems we are at a tipping point. To me it feels kinda like the late 80s right before the Berlin Wall came down.
We have been at a tipping point ever since the French student uprisings of the 1840s.
The Left never quits and never surrenders to reason.
I would rephrase Bibi’s ““I think you need to be blind to see that something wrong is going on.”
The blind obviously cannot see,
Better would be (speaking to a huge seeing majority as well) ” You would need to be blind not to see the wrongs being perpetrated by an appointed, unelected prosecutor.”
Anyone other than myself realize that yesterday was the assassination of Kennedy?
I don’t know enough about the situation to say “Yea” or “Nay” when it comes to impeaching Netanyahu. Looking at the actual allegations against both he and Trump, however, it’s hard not to be struck by how penny ante they are. They fit very well in the same category as Bill Clinton’s offenses and we all know how that ended up.
In contrast, Reagan was accused in the 80s of vastly more serious and concrete offenses, namely the clear and unambiguous breaking of specific federal laws by illegally selling arms to one country to illegally fund armed rebels in another country. And yeah, I know we can argue about all that and whether the laws in question were even constitutional. The point is that in Reagan’s case, the other side was able to pull back and NOT plunge the country into a political crisis. They felt secure enough in their positions of authority and legitimacy to ultimately let it go.
Now, especially in the case of Trump, there’s an air of panic and desperation in his enemies. They’re risking rash and possibly disastrous action in order to hold on to THEIR socio-political power, the rest of us be damned.
Mike
And a Friday to boot….
Cicero: I get your point, but a tipping point is a fundamentally different thing than 170 years of (largely ineffective) pushback against Progressives.
Whether today we are really at a tipping point or not, could be wrong on that, it just feels that way to me. I hope we are because the direction chosen for us by today’s Left is a disaster in the making.
I’m still trying to figure out what crime President Trump may have committed that Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller to investigate.
In contrast, Reagan was accused in the 80s of vastly more serious and concrete offenses, namely the clear and unambiguous breaking of specific federal laws by illegally selling arms to one country to illegally fund armed rebels in another country.
Except he was never accused of that, because the evidence that anyone but Messrs. Poindexter, North, Secord, and Hakim were familiar with the transactions was just about nil. North was convicted of accepting unlawful gratuities and destroying government documents. That aside, their convictions were all for process crimes and the convictions secured at trial were tossed because the case against them was tainted by evidence obtained contra use-immunity laws.
The original 23 count indictment of North was eventually pared down to 12 counts, 11 of which concerned destruction of documents, lying, and accepting unlawful gratuities. One was as follows: “Count Twelve: Conspiracy to defraud the United States, the Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service. The indictment charged that beginning in the spring or summer of 1985, North and others conspired to defraud the United States by illegally using a tax-exempt organization, the National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty (NEPL), to solicit money for weapons for the contras and other unlawful purposes.”
I’m still trying to figure out what crime President Trump may have committed that Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller to investigate.
Have we ever seen the ‘scope memo”? Andrew McCarthy’s assessment was that the irregularity of the Mueller investigation was seminal: they were conducting a criminal investigation with a remit composed for a counter-intelligence investigation.
I’ve taken a cursory look at the three counts against Netanyahu. I’m not persuaded they’re hooey, although at least one of them looks like creative lawyering. Of course, contentions of the prosecutor might not hold up in court and Netanyahu might have an argument (in re the gratuities count) that he’s being subject to selective prosecution (if that’s a defense in Israeli law).
Manju:
the Knesset represents the will of the people
——————
Except that elections here are Italian-style – you vote for a party, not an MP.
This dilutes the representative nature of the democracy, and allows the more senior Swamp Creatures at the top of major party lists to act with little regard for public opinion.
Bottom line – they have been going through Bibi’s trash cans for 30 years, and subjecting him to a steady drumbeat of character assassination (including some vicious attacks on his wife).
All they have to show for their muckracking is a few boxes of cigars that he received as a gift – with no quid pro quo – and a few conversations in which he shmoozes with the editor of a major newspaper to try and get better coverage. Again, no clear quid pro quo or bribery outside normal talk about media access.
Amazingly, like US lefties they seem not to care what they are revealing to The Rest of Us about their motives and methods.
Art Deco: I believe MBunge’s opening point was that the Reagan administration was accused of clear and serious lawbreaking based on facts — compared to one subordinate hearing from another subordinate that the President may have said something hinky on the phone.
Manju:
Actually, I found odd the very cursory of treatment in that article of immunity and Knesset waiver. It seemed as though a fuller explanation of the mechanism should have been offered, but there was just that brief mention without hardly any explanation at all.
So I decided to dig deeper just now, and I found that apparently the article misstated the situation, as best I can determine. In fact, the default position is not immunity, but the Knesset can vote to grant immunity. Quite the opposite of the statement in the originally quoted article, which is somewhat puzzling.
That may explain why the charges have been filed at the present time. This is the situation and the timing, in more detail:
More at the link.
So it appears that the prosecutor is taking advantage of the complete disarray of the Knesset due to the election results being so close that no one is in control. And it appears that the default position is no immunity for a PM. And it also appears that instead of waiting for a pending election, the prosecutor (one person) is going forward to try to finesse the upcoming election.
Because there is no clear line about how much in gift giving is too much, it is arguable that Bibi, and every other politician who has received gifts, has received too much.
The liberal, anti-Bibi prosecutors are, in fact, claiming he got too much (and too often?). It seems likely that a liberal, anti-Bibi judge will rule with the prosecution. These hanging indictments were a big reason that Bibi failed to win the last two elections. It’s not clear what will happen with Bibi, tho it’s clear he’s not “innocent of receiving political gifts”. So bribery, based on trying to get good coverage, seems a terrible precedent, increasing the discretionary power of the state and weakening the “rule of law”. Fraud and breach of trust are also likely just normal political behavior.
The issue for me is whether this is an actual attempt to more clearly define what is acceptable, and reduce the “immoral but not illegal” space, or whether this is just a maximum width net of claimed criminality, used selectively only against the right-oriented politicians.
I’m reminded of the tax-evasion guilt of the Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky — guilty like all oligarchs of bribery and tax-evasion. Yet punished because he opposed Putin.
This is the increasing double standard of the US Dems – criminal Dems getting bribes or illegally leaking secret info or names, that’s OK because they’re Dems. Reps are accused and treated as guilty by the media based on accusations. I’m outraged by the hypocrisy. But I’m getting used to being outraged.
Artfldgr on November 23, 2019 at 11:28 am said:
Anyone other than myself realize that yesterday was the assassination of Kennedy?
* * *
This guy did. He was a child at the time, of course, but remembers his parents’ reactions.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/11/i_was_in_cuba_on_the_day_that_president_kennedy_was_killed.html
Jeff Brokaw on November 23, 2019 at 12:02 pm said:
Cicero: I get your point, but a tipping point is a fundamentally different thing than 170 years of (largely ineffective) pushback against Progressives.
* * *
Without the 170 years of building the slag heap of Progressive policies (because the pushback — such as it was — did not prevent it), there is no potential tipping point.
If you don’t put any straw on the camel’s back, there is no “last straw” to break it.
“The Left never quits and never surrenders to reason.” – Cicero
That has become increasingly obvious, even to the casual observer.
Will the Progressive perfidy finally lead to effective pushback?
There are some stirrings (see linked stories), but will they build to a critical mass or not?
Whether we are at the tipping / breaking point NOW is unknowable; if the situation does tip / break, then we are.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/11/wagon_train_kanye_west_is_fleeing_california_too.html
https://libertyunyielding.com/2019/11/21/breaking-california-supremes-reject-state-law-requiring-trump-tax-returns-to-get-on-ballot/
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/california-nears-limits-progressive-adventurism-policy-and-politics/
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/federal-judge-rules-covington-students-275-million-libel-lawsuit-against-nbc-may-proceed/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=top-bar-latest&utm_term=first