No one really fell off their chair when it happened. The writing had been on the wall, the plans were in place and the marching orders had been given. On June 13, one of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s most ardent fans, journalist Boaz Golan, tweeted, “The indictment against Netanyahu is illegal because the person who filed it was picked for his job through subterfuge and in violation of the law. In any properly functioning country, such an indictment would have been annulled.” That “person” was Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit.
This first expected harbinger of spring signaled what many view, in fact, as a dark winter. The tweet opened the floodgates. Al-Monitor asked Knesset member Miki Zohar of the Likud party, the chair of the government coalition and the lawmaker closest to the prime minister, whether he too believes that the state should cancel the indictment against Netanyahu due to the cloud allegedly hanging over Mandelblit’s head. “The indictment must be annulled. There’s no doubt,” Zohar responded without missing a beat. There you have it — the cat is out of the bag. The ongoing campaign by Netanyahu’s supporters delegitimizing Israel’s entire law enforcement system has reached its decisive moment.
