“Cigars and champagne, who the hell cares?” Netanyahu wants – and Trump wants Herzog to pardon him

In his more than an hour-long speech at the Knesset, almost exclusively focused on Israel’s alleged “end of the war” in the Gaza Strip, the American president sent a direct message to his counterpart. It was a “stunning intervention” by a head of state in the internal affairs of another country – less than a year before the next legislative elections in Israel

Two years after the unprecedented attacks by Hamas in Israel, on October 7, 2023, a sliver of peace is finally in sight, based on the agreement proposed by the North American administration last week and whose first phase, which provided for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and the exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinians, was put into effect over the weekend.

Certain that “the war has come to an end”, still aboard Air Force 1 upon arrival in Jerusalem, this Monday morning, Donald Trump headlined the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset, where he spoke for more than an hour about what has already been achieved and what is yet to come to inaugurate what he says will be “the golden age of the Middle East”. In between, he sent a direct message to the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, assuming that he was adding things to the speech he was scheduled to make.

“I have an idea, Mr. President: why don’t you grant him a pardon?”, said Trump, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a defendant in three legal proceedings since 2019 on suspicion of corruption. “Cigars and champagne, who the hell cares?” added Trump, referring to the alleged illicit gifts that the head of the Hebrew government received from a Hollywood mogul, the centerpiece of one of the accusations. In a stroke of confusion, Trump also referred to Netanyahu as “one of the great presidents in times of war”.

It was a “stunning intervention into Israel’s domestic politics and judicial system, made from the podium of the Knesset”, shortly afterwards. “Trump had already spoken out previously about Netanyahu’s trial, but in his speech he went further than ever to reinforce his ally’s domestic political position.”

This attempt to reinforce Netanyahu’s position at home comes after two years of a war that, according to several analysts, was only prolonged to guarantee Netanyahu’s political survival, at the cost of more than 67,000 Palestinian lives, including those of 18,500 children.

“After the catastrophe of October 7th, war became yet another instrument for [Netanyahu] remain in power”, said a few months ago Raviv Drucker, an Israeli investigative journalist who co-produced the film The Bibi Files – “the driving force is cases of corruption and everything had its origins in the fact that the prime minister did not respect the law”.

As Drucker says, they have been his driving force over the last 24 months, with information and details about the various cases pending against the Israeli prime minister being obscured by new fronts of attack – since October 2023, he has attacked the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran and Qatar. Along the way, he tried to prevent the arrival in national and international cinemas of “The Bibi Files”, a documentary assembled with images of the police interrogations to which Netanyahu was subjected, which “argues that Netanyahu’s actions, from his attempt to destroy the country’s judicial system to the prolongation of the ongoing war in Gaza – may all be related to his efforts to evade the charges he faces”, as .

At issue are three distinct processes, the first of which is process 1000, the “cigars and champagne” type. In it, Netanyahu is accused of fraud and breach of trust in the face of allegations that he and his wife, Sara, received expensive illicit gifts from Hollywood mogul Arnon Milchan, worth around 177 thousand euros, and also that he, Netanyahu, violated Israeli legislation on conflicts of interest when he assisted Milchan in renewing his long-term residence visa in the USA and helped him with “tax issues”.

In addition to this, Netanyahu also faces the 2000 trial, in which he is accused of fraud and breach of trust for his alleged attempt to reach an agreement what is the place where with the editor of the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, Arnon (Noni) Mozes, to guarantee him more positive media coverage in exchange for legislation that would weaken his main rival, the newspaper Israel Hayom. In similar fashion, Case 4000, also known as the Bezeq-Walla Case, involves alleged regulatory decisions on the part of Netanyahu to financially benefit Shaul Elovitch, a shareholder in telecommunications giant Bezeq, by hundreds of millions of shekels, in exchange for news coverage favorable to his government on the Walla news website, owned by the media mogul.

The fruits of Trump’s support

For Netanyahu, everything is nothing more than a witch hunt, precisely the expression that Trump has used to reject accusations against himself and other world leaders aligned with him, such as Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil. Netanyahu says, from the beginning and without presenting evidence, that all the accusations were fabricated as part of a political coup orchestrated by the Israeli police and Public Prosecutor’s Office.

These accusations arose side by side with those before the attacks of October 7, 2023, in the face of the government’s attempts to limit judicial power, a reform that included, among other measures, allowing greater government influence in the selection of judges and restricting the abilities of magistrates to revoke legislation, risking creating what jurist Kim Schappele called , a disfigured democracy with a high concentration of power in the hands of the executive.

When, last June, the Jerusalem court decided to move forward with Netanyahu’s trial, the most extremist ministers in his government came to his defense, with Bezalel Smotrich accusing the prosecutors of “incredible obliviousness” by “insisting on being small people, without any vision, strategy or understanding of reality, and without the slightest discretion or understanding of national priorities and interests”.

Echoing Smotrich’s words, Itamar Ben Gvir, the head of Israel’s National Security, criticized in a statement the court’s attitude for being “disconnected from reality” and reiterated what he said in his Truth Social – “Bibi Netanyahu’s trial should be CANCELED IMMEDIATELY or a Pardon should be granted to a Great Hero who did so much for the State”, wrote the American president at the end of June.

This was the message he brought up again, this time in Israel, before the country’s elected deputies, less than a month after Herzog himself said he might even grant a presidential pardon to Netanyahu given that the legal cases he faces “weigh heavily on Israeli society”.

If the war in Gaza has indeed come to an end, as Trump has just announced, what does that mean for Netanyahu in this context? Only a pardon can save him from prison, with less than a year to go before new legislative elections in Israel. In his speech to the Knesset, Trump also made a point of mentioning that Netanyahu “is a very popular leader, because he knows how to win.” The point is that it isn’t, or wasn’t, judging by the bulk of polls in recent months.

But here too, Trump’s support could earn Netanyahu his political survival. If, a week ago, it showed that 45% of Israelis wanted the prime minister to resign immediately, the ceasefire agreement seems to have sweetened Netanyahu’s future, with an opinion poll three days ago, conducted in the aftermath of Trump’s announcement, showing Netanyahu’s Likud. And there is no guarantee that it will not continue to rise until the date of the next legislative elections, which must take place before October 27, 2026.

As on Saturday, “Trump cornered Netanyahu, but he may also have saved him.” Could Trump’s support help “rewrite Netanyahu’s legacy as the prime minister who presided over Israel’s worst security failure and longest war”, asked Tal Shalev in that article. This, he immediately responds, “will be the ultimate test of the memory of Israeli voters”.