Americans should be somewhat disheartened to see Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fail (for now) to form a majority government. But we should be far more worried that the main “corruption” charges hanging over his head — the ones that surely kept his coalition from winning an outright victory — carry the seeds of a major infringement of an essential freedom.
Netanyahu surely has flaws. He is, however, a genuine friend to the United States, where he spent a significant portion of his childhood, college, and early professional career. Despite his hard-line reputation, he also is a master diplomat and a stabilizing presence in the Middle East. He has built strong working relationships not only with Egypt (a non-enemy of Israel since the late 1970s) but also with Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and smaller, relatively moderate Arab states.
When Syria is again destabilized, Iran newly emboldened, and the U.S. in strategic retreat in the region, Netanyahu’s tough-minded but adept diplomatic touch could be useful. So would the basic sense of continuity if he were to serve one final term.
The corruption charges facing him, meanwhile, are problematic. It does look as if he and his wife have been living extravagantly, and they look grasping and a bit unethical in accepting expensive gifts, such as copious amounts of rare cigars and fine champagne, from people they call “friends” but who could be seen as supplicants.
I claim no expertise in Israeli law concerning gift limits, but judging from most coverage I’ve read, the gifts in themselves seem at worst a minor violation. The major allegation against Netanyahu would have to be that the gifts were accepted as a bribe for specific official action. If the gifts weren’t just an extravagance, but actually changed Israeli government policy, that would amount to a crime under the laws of most republics.
What is chilling about the charges against Netanyahu, though, is that the alleged “bribery” involved no change in policy at all. Instead, he is alleged to have influenced media outlets friendly to him to also be friendly to those who provided the gifts.
Read that again: The prosecutor says it’s a crime to try to influence a free press to provide favorable coverage to a third party. This is a dangerous notion and a threat to freedom of the press, at least as it is understood throughout the world of advanced constitutional republics.
Caroline Glick, a well-known hardline Zionist columnist, is sometimes seen as too uncompromising, but she has an admirable grasp on essential democratic truths. This week, she eloquently explained why this prosecution involves “a legal doctrine that rejects the very essence of democracy.”
Glick writes that the “central issue” is “whether it is possible to limit — much less criminalize — relations between media agents and politicians.” Throughout the developed world, “from Oslo to London to Sydney to Washington, the position of courts and senior jurists is that it is not permissible to criminalize, or even to set limits on such relations.”
Glick wisely embraces the argument of Netanyahu’s attorneys: “Prosecution of the Netanyahu case would signal to journalists and media executives that favorable or damaging publicity about a candidate may be investigated by the police and by prosecutors to determine whether the publicity was a quid exchanged for the quo of official action. If the police and prosecutors are empowered to probe the mixed motives of journalists and politicians, they can exercise arbitrary control over essential institutions of democracy.”
This is exactly true. It is good reason for all Americans and Israelis who care about liberty, whether they like Netanyahu’s politics or not, to hope this prosecution fails. Such incipient tyranny must be defeated.
