Get out of gaol free?

The Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu has been on trial for corruption since May 24, 2020. The trial had been initially prolonged because it was paused due to COVID-19 and more recently, because of Israel’s attack on Gaza following the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas¹.

Then Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit announced the indictment of Netanyahu on November 21, 2019.

• The first case alleges that Netanyahu, 74, and his wife, Sara, 65, received lavish presents from prominent Israeli Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan and Australian billionaire businessman and Israeli citizen James Packer in return for political favours. This case charges the Israeli PM with fraud and breach of trust. Fraud and breach of trust carry a prison sentence of up to three years while bribery charges carry a sentence of up to 10 years in jail and/or a fine. Milchan testified that he provided gifts to Netanyahu in June 2020.
• The second case alleges Netanyahu negotiated with Israel’s leading daily, Yedioth Ahronoth, for favourable coverage in exchange for legislation that would slow the growth of a rival newspaper. This case also charges him with fraud and breach of trust.
• The second case alleges Netanyahu granted regulatory favours to Israel’s leading telecommunications company, Bezeq Telecom Israel, in return for positive coverage of him and his wife on a news website controlled by Bezeq’s former chairman. Besides fraud and breach of trust, Netanyahu has been charged with bribery in this case¹.

Israeli intelligence knew of the impending attack by Hamas on October 7th, 2023 as much as a year before it happened. While it was initially considered to be beyond the capability of Hamas, given the small size of their previous attacks, signals intelligence and even observation of Hamas’ rehearsals for the attack were also dismissed².

After the assault on Israel, I suspect Benjamin Netanyahu could not believe his luck. His trial was paused for two months after the Hamas attack, but resumed in early December 2023, and the judge in the case acceded to a request to keep the hearings to three days per week due to the Israeli attack on Gaza, thus prolonging the trial even further³.

More recently, an Israeli court cancelled last week’s hearings in the corruption trial, accepting a request made by Netanyahu on classified diplomatic and security grounds. They submitted the prime minister’s schedule to the court to demonstrate “the national need for the prime minister to devote all his time and energy to the political, national and security issues at hand”⁴. Like Trump, Netanyahu has called this trial a “witch hunt”¹. 

Netanyahu has also attempted to reshape the judiciary, initially passing a law in 2023 to remove the power of the Supreme Court (and lower courts) to cancel government decisions deemed “extremely unreasonable” as Israel does not have a written constitution. This is in part seen by critics of Netanyahu as a way for him to derail his corruption trial⁵.

The law passed earlier this year gives the government a larger role in appointing judges. It would give another two of the nine seats on the Judicial Selection Committee to lawyers chosen by the government and the opposition. Those seats are currently held by the Israeli Bar Association. The political appointees would have the power to veto nominations to the Supreme Court and lower courts⁶.

Netanyahu started the genocide in Gaza and lied when he said it was all about getting the hostages back. This is clear because, in July 2025, he effectively spiked a draft hostage and ceasefire deal by introducing a raft of new, 11th-hour demands.

He is purposely prolonging the war and torpedoing deals solely for his political benefit. Indeed, far-right members of Netanyahu’s coalition have pledged to bring down the government should he end the war. Bringing down his government would allow his trial to continue unconstrained⁷. Like most christofascists in the US, Netanyahu has used the bible to justify the killing of Palestinians⁸.

Some of those in his government seem to look upon Palestinians much as the nazis looked upon the Jews and Slavs; as untermenschen (subhuman). Remarks from members of his government and parts of Israeli society make this very clear⁹.

UN experts have told the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People today that what is happening in Gaza is, in fact, a genocide, and they have urged all member states to examine their relationships with Israel to avoid being complicit in the crime being perpetrated on the Palestinian people in Gaza.

Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territory Occupied Since 1967, described herself as “a reluctant chronicler of genocide”. She said the international community must recognise what is happening in Gaza as a genocide and that “they have experienced those through their entire life,” she said. However, the current situation is different, as Israel has used the pretext of attacking Hamas to accelerate the forced displacement of the Palestinians that began decades ago, but it “is much more severe because of the technology, the weaponry and the impunity”, Albanese added.  She said that it is time to consider suspending Israel’s credentials as a UN Member State, as no other country has maintained an unlawful occupation violating decades of UN resolutions as Israel has done¹⁰.

Tlaleng Mofokeng, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, said the Israeli leadership’s promise last year to destroy Gaza has been fulfilled: “The Strip now is a wasteland of rubble and human remains”, where survivors struggle to hold on to life and bodies are decomposing in the ruins of what used to be clinics and hospitals. Some 560 attacks have been reported on health facilities, which face shortages of power, medical supplies and personnel — only 36 hospitals remain, and they are only partially functioning. Accusing Israel and its allies of “knowingly and intentionally imposing famine and dehydration”, she warned that these practices will stunt what remains of an entire generation, as people have started to die of starvation¹⁰.

When the people in the west started demonstrating in large numbers in support of Palestinians, with the failure of the ‘antisemitism’ slur, and despite the complicity of assorted mainstream media organisations and governments (including our own and that of the UK), Netanyahu realised he had to do something to distract the independent media and the politically engaged from the Gaza genocide. Attacking Iran was the best available option, for he knew that the idiot Trump could be flattered into joining in bombing Iran¹¹.

Netanyahu used his ‘Iran is on the verge of developing nuclear weapons’, which is something he has been saying for decades¹². The irony here is that Iran entered into an agreement formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in part brokered by the Obama administration. It was a landmark accord reached between Iran and several world powers, including the United States, in July 2015. Under its terms, Iran agreed to dismantle much of its nuclear program and open its facilities to more extensive international inspections in exchange for removal of billions of dollars’ worth of sanctions¹³.

Proponents of the deal said that it would help prevent a revival of Iran’s nuclear weapons program and thereby reduce the prospects for conflict between Iran and its regional rivals, including Israel and Saudi Arabia. However, the deal has been in jeopardy since the idiot Donald Trump withdrew the United States from it in 2018. In retaliation for the U.S. departure and for deadly attacks on prominent Iranians in 2020, including one by the United States, Iran has resumed its nuclear activities. UN inspectors reported in early 2023 that Iran had enriched trace amounts of uranium but not to weapons-grade levels¹³.

How many tens or hundreds of thousands of men, women, children and babies must die simply to keep Netanyahu out of gaol? He needs to be imprisoned either in Israel or The Hague, or hopefully, both.

Sources

1. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/5/netanyahus-corruption-trial-resumes-amid-israeli-war-on-gaza-what-to-know
2. https://blotreport.com/2023/12/20/symbiotic-atrocities/
3. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-12-05/ty-article/.premium/judges-in-netanyahu-corruption-trial-accept-reduction-of-hearings-due-to-war/
4. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/30/benjamin-netanyahu-corruption-trial-delayed-ntwnfb
5. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-65086871
6. https://apnews.com/article/israel-judicial-overhaul-netanyahu-hamas-war-76c471060699ae12d520d7ee00073004
7. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/04/middleeast/netanyahu-derailed-hostage-deal-in-july-intl
8. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/11/benjamin-netanyahu-amalek-israel-palestine-gaza-saul-samuel-old-testament/
9. https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-south-africa-genocide-hate-speech-97a9e4a84a3a6bebeddfb80f8a030724
10. https://press.un.org/en/2024/gapal1473.doc.htm
11. https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/trump-and-netanyahu-turn-to-iran-to-distract-from-war-crimes,19869
12. https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2025/6/18/the-history-of-netanyahus-rhetoric-on-irans-nuclear-ambitions
13. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-iran-nuclear-deal