Netanyahu’s testimony isn’t that different from his masterful media appearances

Photo: Flash90

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It’s Binyamin Netanyahu’s worst nightmare. With the Middle East transforming by the hour, he’ll have to spend three days a week giving testimony in his criminal trials before Jerusalem District Court judges, though the sessions are being held in Tel Aviv for security reasons.

Netanyahu began testifying as a witness for the defense, being examined by his attorney Amit Haddad, a protégé of the late chareidi attorney Yaakov Weinroth. Netanyahu’s testimony isn’t that different from his masterful media appearances, as he demonstrated once again at his press conference last week on the eve of his first day of testimony.

In that environment, it’s Netanyahu who sets the tone, the boundaries, and the narrative. But in the cross-examination phase by the prosecution, things will look very different.

“We’ve changed the face of the Middle East, but there are wide-ranging ramifications,” Netanyahu began, explaining that he’d have to divide his attention between his testimony and the notes passed to him throughout the proceedings.

The judges reluctantly acquiesced, sensing that a refusal would be a step too far.

The court’s insistence on Netanyahu taking the witness stand for days on end, starting the week that saw Israel’s systematic annihilation of the Syrian army’s ground, air, and sea assets, is hard to explain by ordinary judicial standards. Postponement requests from active reservists are granted as a matter of course. A similar request from the man overseeing the entire war effort merits at least the same response.

Instead, the prosecution and the court doubled down, intensifying the sense of grievance on the Israeli right, which sees the Feldstein affair, the arrest of Prison Service Commissioner Kobi Yaakobi, and Netanyahu’s trial as a “convergence of arenas” by a desperate elite fighting to preserve its hegemony over public institutions and power centers.

This background likely gifted Netanyahu the right to have the notes passed to him, which forced the judges to repeatedly pause the proceedings. The precedent set during the direct examination will be binding for the cross examination. After a difficult year, Israel has received a piska tava of good news on practically every front over the past two months. It turns out that on the legal plane as well, offense is the best defense, preferably combined with a piska (note).

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IN these dramatic days, one could describe Netanyahu as having his head in the sky and his feet in the mud. In his testimony, Bibi spoke of the collapse of the charges against him, brick by brick — the same terminology he’s used to describe the dismantling of the “axis of resistance.”

Netanyahu publicly brought up the moments when he resisted pressure for a ceasefire, in Rafah, on the Philadelphi Route, with Hezbollah and Iran, and now with Syria. In private conversations, he expatiates on the virtue of moderation no less than that of boldness, imagining what Israel would look like if he’d followed the advice of former defense minister Yoav Gallant and chief of staff Herzi Halevi to embark on simultaneous large-scale operations in Gaza and Lebanon at the start of the conflict.

In contrast to the first day of his trial in 2023, Bibi refrained from staging a courthouse press conference at a podium bearing the symbols of the state, in what would have come across as a provocation to the judges. Bibi is feeling good about how the trial has gone so far, and the last thing he needs is to personally antagonize his judges. That’s why he saved his passion for the press conference the evening before, in which he lashed out at everybody and his brother, aside from the judges.

Even as he throws everything but the kitchen sink at the media, the police, and the prosecution, not a word of criticism for the judges crosses his lips. Bibi believes that main charge, bribery, is behind him, and hopes to use his testimony to quash the breach-of-trust clause as well. Personal attacks against his judges are not what the doctor ordered.

A Venerable Frequent Flyer

“It’s your turn, and you also need to get home,” the Rosh Yeshivah told me with a smile, waiting patiently and carrying his own suitcase on his return from an almost two-week-long fundraising campaign in the US for the Slabodka yeshivah.

At the age of 88, with doctors recommending complete rest after his recovery from a difficult illness, Rav Moshe Hillel Hirsch has racked up dozens of flight hours this past year. As part of the Olam HaTorah Fund campaign, he personally attended every meeting where his presence was required.

His latest visit was more personal. Alongside his concern for the Torah world as a whole, Rav Moshe Hillel has for half a century been personally responsible for the kemach of hundreds of students and avreichim of the Slabodka yeshivah, which he heads alongside his colleague, Rav Dov Landau.

We once recounted in these pages how Rav Dov reacted when he was asked to admit a certain student to the yeshivah, against Rav Moshe Hillel’s opinion.

“How can I do that?” Rav Landau asked. “I deliver shiurim and am marbitz Torah for the talmidim, while Rav Moshe Hillel has taken on himself the primary responsibility of the yeshivah’s finances.”

A midnight flight from New York one week ago: In the seat in front of me, the Rosh Yeshivah sits down for a ten-hour flight, for him synonymous with a ten-hour learning session. Other passengers doze off, but the man in the front seat doesn’t rest for a moment. The rabbinical frock is replaced by a beketshe, and his son Reb Aharon sits behind him, stepping up now and then to bring his father seforim and notes of chiddushim.

The observance of bein adam l’chaveiro is evident with everyone, from other passengers to flight personnel. Rav Moshe Hillel is cordial to all, and tries to do everything himself, from removing his bag from the upper compartment to removing the wrapping from his kosher meal. When he rises to daven, changing his beketshe for his frock, Rav Moshe Hillel is careful not to stray outside his seat to avoid bothering the passengers around him. He keeps the lighting as focused to his seat as possible, and there’s no trace of entitlement in his manners.

After a silent Shacharis, I approach to ask whether, as someone who occasionally appears on secular media, I should accept invitations to discuss the draft issue. Rav Moshe Hillel considers the matter and his conclusion is the same as his instruction to MKs: Avoid discussing the matter in wartime. Contrary to the slogan “It’s a mitzvah to be a deserter,” meant to encourage wavering bochurim, any outward discussion does more harm than good.

“During wartime, no one wants to listen, so there’s no point in explaining,” he said. “The wise man at this hour will be silent.”

And forget the chatter about controlling gabbaim. Despite seemingly never taking a moment’s break from his Torah, the Rosh Yeshivah displayed an impressive understanding of current affairs and the state of the country.

“I know a man who’s as humble as Moshe and Hillel and his name is Moshe Hillel,” Rav Steinman ztz”l once said of him. Sometimes a personal experience expresses things better than sippurei tzaddikim.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1041)