ASHDOD, Israel — This past Friday evening, while in Israel, I had the opportunity to watch the weekly news program on Israel’s Channel 12, while staying with relatives in the suburbs north of Haifa who are not religiously observant.
(The best news programing in Israel is on Friday night, which unfortunately means that only secular Israelis see it, at least live. So the media elite, who lean left and secular, are largely talking to themselves.)
This particular edition of the show was devoted to coverage of the latest Benjamin Netanyahu scandal. To an outside observer, it seemed just like all the rest of them.
Netanyahu is currently on trial for three corruption cases that have fallen apart in court, and yet persist. In one case, for example, Netanyahu is accused of offering a regulatory favor to a tycoon in return for favorable business coverage in his newspaper. But there was no regulatory favor — in fact, the tycoon’s company lost money — and Netanyahu certainly did not receive any positive coverage.
The cases were brought, Caroline Glick observed last year, because Netanyahu, a populist nationalist, has usurped the power of Israel’s technocratic elites by challenging their policies and their authority. “They seek to oust Netanyahu from public life and disenfranchise his voters by disqualifying and demonizing their elected leader,” she wrote.
The latest claim is that one of Netanyahu’s unofficial aides — someone who helps him outside of government — leaked classified documents to media outlets in Europe. The leaked documents, seized in Gaza, suggested that Hamas leaders were intentionally manipulating the hostage issue in an effort to exert psychological pressure on the Israeli public. The leak made Hamas look bad, and also, incidentally, made the Israeli opposition uncomfortable.
The Israeli military arrested the aide and held him in severely restrictive conditions, as if he were a terrorist. He has since been charged with crimes that could yield a life sentence. An Israeli military officer who had allegedly leaked the information to him is being charged with lesser crimes. Now, the Israeli media are fixated on the question of “What did Netanyahu know, and when did he know it?” as he distances himself from the aide, who is keen to blame his boss.
The whole issue is absurd. Had the same sequence of events happened in the United States, it would have been completely legal.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at a memorial ceremony for those killed by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, and those who fell in the “Iron Sword” war, at the Knesset, the Parliament, in Jerusalem, Monday, Oct. 28, 2024. (Debbie Hill, Pool Photo via AP)
The president, the country’s elected leader, has ultimate declassification authority and can decide what is secret and what is not. He can distribute that information any way he wants to. Moreover, the leak about Hamas probably helped Israel by showing the organization’s cruelty; it likely did not harm Israel’s national security.
Netanyahu’s critics say the leak somehow jeopardized a hostage deal, but no one can explain exactly how that happened. Hamas is clearly not interested in any deal unless Israel gives up fighting it, now and forever. It is simply brutal; this is not an organization overly concerned with public relations.
It is hard to believe there was any kind of deal on the table so sensitive to a portrayal of Hamas in the media as psychologically manipulative, which it clearly is.
The fact that the hostages are said to be victims of the intelligence leak is a hint that the “scandal” is being shaped by the Israeli media to cause maximum outrage by touching on the country’s most sensitive topic. But again, there is no proof. And by overreacting to the idea Hamas might be using the hostage issue to urge the Israeli opposition to bring Netanyahu down, his critics are inadvertently suggesting that part of the story might be true, or at least credible.
There is a familiar pattern to the accusations against Netanyahu. He is accused of doing something that is not exactly illegal, or in fact entirely legal. Then he denies it, or denies breaking the law, rather than resigning, as he is expected to do. Then absurd legal proceedings begin against his aides, usually young men with everything to lose, and they are pressured to turn against him. Meanwhile, half the public is aghast at Netanyahu’s audacity for defying the system.
The constant pursuit of Netanyahu by Israel’s “deep state” seems strange to supporters of Israel in the U.S., who primarily see his success as a statesman and strategist. Why wouldn’t Israel’s elite rally behind him — especially when the ridiculous warrant issued Thursday against him by the International Criminal Court threatens the entire Israeli war effort?
The fiasco is a reminder that radical opposition is often, though not always, also a sign of great leadership.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
