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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu smiles during his participation in the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, in Jerusalem on November 19, 2018.
(photo credit: AMIR COHEN / REUTERS)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Channel 10 engage in a battle against corruption as key police decisions and lawsuits are imminent.
From Sunday to Tuesday this week, Netanyahu has sent a statement with his most comprehensive and detailed defense in Case 4000 to date. Channel 10 aired numerous bombing stories against the prime minister, and the Jerusalem Post spoke to multiple sources covering the entire debate on these cases.
The police have already recommended to indict Netanyahu for bribery in the 1000 and 2000 cases and should do the same with the 4000 case.
The Jerusalem Post announced in June that Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit was likely in early spring 2019 to indict the prime minister for corruption in case 4000, and could also do so in the case 1,000.
The case 2000 was still at the limit of the time.
But Channel 10 reported late Tuesday that the director of the Economic Crimes Division, Liat Ben-Ari, who had sentenced former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in the Holyland case, also recommended indictment for corruption in the case 2000.
The 1000 case is known as Illegal Gifts Deal, the 2000 case under the Yediot Aharonot-Israel Hayom case and the 4000 case for the Bezeq-Walla case.
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In the evening of Sunday, Channel 10 announced that Ben-Ari was preparing for an indictment of corruption against the prime minister in the 1000 case.
From 9:00 pm to 10:00 pm On Monday evening, Channel 10's investigative program, Makor, presented a wide range of claims that Netanyahu had reached an agreement with Bezeq and the owner of the online news site Walla, Shaul Elovich, on the treatment of Bezeq by the government to ensure positive media coverage.
In particular, the Makor program contained a large number of interviews with former Walla editors and reporters about Elovitch's interventions, CEO Ilan Yeshua, editor Avi Alkalai and Netanyahu's spokesperson the state, Nir Hefetz, aimed to steer the coverage in favor of Netanyahu.
In addition, he detailed cases in which the posting of articles was delayed, removed from the site or was never posted due to the opposition of the Netanyahu camp.
Alkalai said the orders came from the Netanyahu family, including Sara Netanyahu, although sometimes a series of people prevented her from communicating directly with Walla's staff.
In response to the Makor program, Netanyahu released at nearly 23 hours. On Monday evening, his most detailed statement to date attacked the arguments against him in the 4000 case.
Going far beyond his mantra "there was nothing and there was nothing", the statement began by arguing that the alleged benefits to Elovich due to the merger between Bezeq and the company Yes (where Elovitch also held certain property rights) had all been approved by a series of non-political officials as an appropriate political decision.
His statement stated that the Director General of the Ministry of Communications, Avi Berger, had not been fired by Netanyahu for several months.
In addition, the statement indicated that when Berger was fired as part of a new coalition, several CEOs of other ministries were also fired as part of a new coalition government and that no one complained of the dismissal of others.
Berger's dismissal and his replacement by his loyalist and former Netanyahu campaign manager, Shlomo Filber, was cited as a major sign of abuse of power that affects politics towards Elovich.
Filber denied all charges against him and Netanyahu for a long time, including a mbadive Twitter campaign featuring a counter narrative, but ended up making the state witness against Netanyahu and confessed to illegal activities in his name.
On Tuesday, Swiss Post asked many sources about the latest developments.
Some explained that a careful badysis of the Ministry of Communication's reforms and authorizations showed that Netanyahu's defenses broke down after careful scrutiny and revealed a picture of corruption.
Other members of Netanyahu claimed that many allegations overlapped, but that, broken down by period, function and persons involved, none can be traced back to Netanyahu, let alone the crime committed by him.
The Justice Ministry issued a statement Tuesday night that appears to contain the impact of the decision reported by Ben-Ari and denies reports that Deputy Attorney General Amit Harrari has been instructed to file a counter-opinion.
The ministry said that a number of officials, including Harrari, would intervene from their own legal point of view – as was the case in such high-profile cases – to give Mandelblit maximum points to take into account.
Regarding Tuesday night's report on the 2000 affair, a Netanyahu spokesman tried to reprimand Yesh Atid party leader Yair Lapid for his many meetings with newspaper owners and his alleged attempts to harm to Israel Hayom – of whom Netanyahu is also accused.
The first lines of Friday will include a thorough exploration of the problems.
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