A tempting offer sits on the Passover table – mediation between the attorney general and criminal defendant No. 1. The process would start with an easing of the procedure for presenting evidence – on the number of witnesses and how they would be heard, and how a plea bargain could be reached.
Supporters of mediation make a number of arguments that can’t easily be dismissed. They say the country and the public have already paid too high a price because of the madness caused by Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial, and that if the trial continues, the damage could be truly calamitous.
The rift in society already threatens to become a civil war, and it will probably take many years for every stage of the trial to end. And who can predict what that end will be?
Ostensibly, mediation would be a businesslike approach that cuts losses by averting the total crack-up that will occur when the defendant’s sinister legislation, which he has already partly enacted, is completed. This argument relies on the notion that halting the trial will halt the legislation.
But this expectation is baseless. Remember the frog that was stung by the scorpion it ferried across the river? The equation this plea bargain wants to rely on, no legislation in exchange for no trial, became irrelevant long ago.
This isn’t only because Netanyahu has proved that agreements with him – like the conflict-of-interest agreement – aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. It’s also because he aspires to use the judicial overhaul as a workshop to build a new Israeli sociology. He believes that this would equalize the power of all the world’s oppressed to that of the elites who took over the country and have been running its institutions.
But the “second Israel,” Netanyahu’s preferred implement, is blowing up in his face. It’s now demanding damages for decades of oppression. Will Netanyahu really seek to prevent these poor souls from getting what they deserve, especially now that they’ve started to taste victory? Could he even do this if he wanted?
Yariv Levin and Simcha Rothman, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, Yair Netanyahu and his mother Her Royal Highness have already pulled the rug out from under the defendant, who basically only wanted to get home from the trial in peace. They’ve relieved him of the right to decide, with or without a trial.
They couldn’t care less about the damage to the economy. They’re more than willing to steal funding from education and welfare to fund armed militias. They label half the public as anarchists and terrorists, and they’re steadily building the staging area from which they’ll raid the Supreme Court. But they’re not the ones on trial.
They don’t need a barter deal with the justice system. They can ignore all personal considerations. They won’t be bought with a legal offering that isn’t meant for them.
The saboteurs of democracy won’t be beholden to any mediation, deal or concession. On the contrary, as far as they’re concerned (perhaps with the exception of Yair and Sara), Netanyahu can go to prison and get out of their way. He’s the weak link that endangers the judicial coup.
Netanyahu can’t agree to halt the legislation, because unlike the opposition – the protest movements and the public as a whole, which are calculating how to cut their losses – Netanyahu needs a plea bargain to remain prime minister after millions of people voted for him.
But for that he needs the support of pillars of the coup and thus remains committed to his governing coalition’s health and welfare. He realizes that the real plea deal he needs is with his coalition partners, before he can offer a response to the attorney general. And he won’t easily be able to bypass or trick them.
To borrow from an ad from the ’80s and ’90s about fighting HIV/AIDS, the attorney general and supporters of mediation should be warned that “whenever you’re mediating with Netanyahu, you’re mediating with everyone he’s close to” – with his son, his wife, Rothman, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich.
This is how things really are. Mediation or a plea bargain will grant Netanyahu unlimited license to carry out his wicked plans.
A Netanyahu Plea Deal That Halts the Judicial Coup? Not Likely
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09.04.2023
A tempting offer sits on the Passover table – mediation between the attorney general and criminal defendant No. 1. The process would start with an easing of the procedure for presenting evidence – on the number of witnesses and how they would be heard, and how a plea bargain could be reached.
Supporters of mediation make a number of arguments that can’t easily be dismissed. They say the country and the public have already paid too high a price because of the madness caused by Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial, and that if the trial continues, the damage could be truly calamitous.
The rift in society already threatens to become a civil war, and it will probably take many years for every stage of the trial to end. And who can predict what that end will be?
Ostensibly, mediation would be a businesslike approach that cuts losses by averting the total crack-up that will occur when the defendant’s sinister legislation, which he has already partly enacted, is completed. This argument relies on the notion that halting the trial will halt the........
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