Netanyahu's Trial Is a Seductive Spectacle. But Dead Gazan Children Matter Far More
From the Tel Aviv district courthouse, the trial of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can feel like the greatest show on earth. But these days, in light of the depravity of the war in Gaza, it can also feel like a manipulative distraction from what matters: ending the war.
The seductive nature of the trial begins when you enter the courthouse, with the ritualistic stages to approach the inner chamber. First there's the regular security check and X-ray machine at the entrance, then another checkpoint at the top of the stairs where a security detail opens a rope link if your name is on the list.
One flight down your name is checked against another list. Security guards affix a color-coded wristband, and you go through another airport X-ray machine. Then you take the elevator two floors further down, to a secure courtroom blocked off from the world.
Inside, journalists and visitors gossip, watching who walks in, name-checking the prime minister's loyalist lawmakers, spokespeople and supporters who show up that day. When the back door opens, a hush falls, until the audience realizes it's not Him. The low chatter returns, but waves of door-opening anticipation continue until eventually it is him.
Immediately the audience stands up to snap phones and shutters, then sits down. The justices enter, and everyone stands again, then sits again. And all before the proceedings have even begun.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu entering the courtroom yesterday after a month-long hiatus from hearings.Credit: Reuven Kastro
When the legal arguments pick up where they last left off, you switch on full-force concentration: You strain to hear every word, follow every legal flourish or objection, and wait for anything extraordinary by the impeccably coiffed defendant. Will he say something political, break into one of his j'accuse riffs? ("These proceedings are absurd!") Will he take a dig at a reporter, peruse an envelope or a note handed to him, expressionless, and ask for a mysterious, gravitas-filled break?
Benjamin Netanyahu is after all the prime minister of a country at war, while standing trial simultaneously on corruption charges – an extraordinary, even mesmerizing situation.
Wednesday's proceedings were a prime example. Netanyahu is still being cross-examined. Observers that day included Likud's Speaker of the Knesset Amir Ohana, and more surprisingly, the U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee. The latter cavorted with a Bugs Bunny doll, mocking a small detail in the history of Netanyahu's relationship with Arnon Milchan – the Hollywood producer who allegedly supplied gifts to Netanyahu, as per the accusations in one of the three cases.
Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee posing for a photo at the courthouse yesterday.
Outraged critics (including Haaretz' editorial board) saw it as an extension of U.S. President Donald Trump's calls to end the trial – a crass interference in domestic Israeli judicial proceedings, and a MAGA-style statement that the sultan stands above the law.
Bottomless horrors
There are serious political, legal, diplomatic and democratic issues involved. But in certain moments, it also seems that the whole show ultimately keeps the audience riveted with adulation or horror over the man at the center, instead of what should be far and away more urgent right now.
Back out on the street, there is a listlessness in the air these days in Israel. People already know how they feel about Netanyahu, love him or loathe him. Even the cataclysmic war with Iran barely rustled the polls.
Most Israelis are miserable about soldiers dying each day, and are beyond despairing over the hostages dead or dying in Gaza. They are horrified by four IDF soldiers (conscripts and reservists) who committed suicide just in recent weeks, leading to fears of a rising trend (the rate is not conclusive yet, since there are so many more reservists doing so much more active duty now).
Israeli soldiers crying during the funeral of Matan Yashinovaki, 21, a soldier killed in Gaza Strip, last month.Credit: Jack Guez/AFP
These Israelis aren't reading Trump's tweets about Netanyahu's trial, and they aren't amused by Huckabee's Bugs Bunny doll. All they care about is that Trump has failed so far to force Netanyahu and Hamas to reach a hostage release deal.
Other Israelis, far fewer, to be sure, are also miserable about the bottomless horrors the war is inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza: The fact that whole families, pinned under concrete, were dying for a dozen hours in the summer heat while Israeli drones kept help from arriving until they were gone.
They are incapable of accepting that tens of thousands of children have been eradicated or maimed, and that the defense minister wants to build a huge cage and to forcibly transfer hundreds of thousands of Palestinians there.
So instead of going to Netanyahu's show this week, I joined about 60 people who met up at the Air Force base at Hatzor, in the southern-central region of the country. It was a baking afternoon, like every afternoon in the Israeli summer, and the traffic circle outside the base has no shade. The activists unfurled posters of children from Gaza: a chubby-faced toddler, a skinny boy in a football shirt, a baby – all dead.
Israeli activists in Tel Aviv holding photos of children killed in Gaza during a protest in April.Credit: Tomer Appelbaum
For the ninth time in recent months, the demonstrators tried to insert the human toll into the conscience of the air force staff and the pilots bombing Gaza. They don't shout or chant slogans, don't block roads or tussle with police. They mostly avoid talking even amongst themselves; they (we) just stand with the posters.
Once again, they did not stop the war. But an hour without talking or scrolling leaves little to do but observe. Instead of straining to hear the prime minister's every word in the courthouse, I strained to see the _expression_ of drivers passing by the posters of dead Gazan children.
No illusions
As in the past, some of these drivers made offensive finger gestures and scoffed "Lefties!" "Only Bibi!" "What are you doing here? Go to Gaza, go on – go to Gaza." They were men and women alike, some in uniform, some in civilian clothing, some were couples or families. At least one had a baby seat in the car.
The drivers had one thing in common: They all slowed down. The traffic circle forced them to lower their speed from the main road, and they all slowed further at the unusual sight, searching for a clue to explain the ring of people and posters, their eyes taking in the small black words printed in a corner of each poster: "S/he was here and now s/he's gone" (it's only two words in Hebrew).
Destroyed buildings in Gaza as visible from the Israeli side of border yesterday.Credit: Amir Cohen/Reuters
Beyond those who responded, many simply looked on as if they hadn't had time to figure out a response. Once again, I found myself wondering and imagining their reactions. Perhaps one of the air force personnel raised the incident over the dinner table, if only out of boredom, because they saw something unusual today. Israelis love to argue; maybe someone said over dinner: "Those traitors," and another responded, "but they have a point."
One bus driver had to make a full loop around the traffic circle. He raised one hand to the window, palm facing the demonstrators, and held it steady like a frozen wave for the duration of his U-turn. Was he an Arab bus driver, relieved to find a group of Jewish Israelis unwilling to accept Israel's eradication of these children in Gaza?
One direction of impact that did not require guessing was the feeling among the protestors themselves. None held the illusion that the demonstration would end the war.
Today, on the 650th day of the war, the women blocking cars on the Ayalon Highway to demand a hostage deal, or the citizens holding demonstrations and vigils by the military defense compound in Tel Aviv probably know they won't stop it either. But every Israeli or Palestinian demanding an end to the war, on behalf of hostages, civilians – and also combatants who are someone's father or son – matter more than their depraved leaders, in the courtroom of humanity if not in the halls of power.