“You don’t start a hearing before the elections unless you can finish it before the elections,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote on his Facebook page Jan. 6, referring to the possibility that Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit may decide to indict him on criminal charges, pending a hearing, prior to the April 9 elections. “Under no circumstances can the public hear the claims of one side and not the answers of the other!” Netanyahu wrote. Netanyahu’s argument has subsumed the political agenda, pushing aside his government’s status quo policy and creeping annexation of the occupied territories, which are turning Israel into an apartheid state. The right of the privileged Netanyahu to be presumed innocent until proven guilty dominates the public agenda at the expense of essential issues such as the rights of oppressed minorities in Israel and the occupied territories.
Indeed, Israel’s citizens should not go to the polls on April 9 armed only with one side’s claims, meaning an indictment of the candidate for prime minister. Who knows? Perhaps after hearing the arguments presented by Netanyahu’s high-priced lawyers, Mandelblit will decide to bin the police findings in the three criminal cases against Netanyahu, known as files 1000, 2000 and 4000. Netanyahu’s attorneys may come up with surprising arguments, which police investigators had not heard before from the prime minister himself when he found time to host them at his official residence (unlike run-of-the-mill suspects who are summoned for questioning to a police station or detention facility). However, according to Netanyahu, the truth will only emerge after the horses are long gone from the stable, meaning after April 9.