Prime Minister Netanyahu in the Dock A Constitutional Contradiction Emerges in a Country Without a Constitution
https://www.nysun.com/editorials/prime-minister-netanyahu-in-the-dock/91145/
What a spectacle is underway in Israel, where Prime Minister Netanyahu is being prosecuted by his own government for bribery and other crimes that he was formally alleged to have committed before he was re-elected to a third term. It’s a lesson in constitutional conundrums from a country that doesn’t have a constitution — and not just because Mr. Netanyahu has entered the dock with all saddlebags flapping in the breeze.
“Netanyahu’s Defense Strategy Is to Undermine His Accuser, the State of Israel,” is the way the poser was put in Israel’s leading liberal daily, Haaretz, as the trial was getting underway. A country doesn’t have to have a constitution, it seems, for its headline writers to comprehend the implicit constitutional contradiction. Here in America, we’ve been marking the point as a special counsel pursued, in President Trump, his own boss.
In America, of course, there are ways around this problem. One would have been for President Trump to fire the prosecutor for trying to prosecute him in a way the President didn’t like. Mr. Trump was more forbearing, and merely unleashed tornados of tweets against Robert Mueller, until the prosecutor cleared him of collusion with the Russians. Another method for dealing with the predicament is impeachment. It, too, cleared Mr. Trump.
The devil in Israel’s details is that it doesn’t have a constitution that grants only to the prime minister, as America’s constitution grants to only its president, the sole power to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. It is true that a year ago the Times of Israel issued a, in our view, smart column suggesting that Mr. Netanyahu might be able legally fire his prosecutor. In the event, he didn’t, suggesting the premier was uncertain on that head.
We’re tempted to suggest, since Israel lacks a constitutional impeachment process, that Mr. Netanyahu is bogged down in the purgatory of parliamentary government. Then again, too, if the Knesset were to conclude that Mr. Netanyahu is unworthy of being premier, it could end his tenure in office faster than one can say Nancy Pelosi. The problem for the prosecution is that the Knesset loves the country’s longest-serving premier.
As, it seems, do the voters — enough so, at least, to give him the edge in three consecutive elections in the past year. The most recent rendezvous at the polls was held after a formal indictment was handed up against the premier. It resulted in a broadly based coalition government in which Mr. Netanyahu’s opposition now serves more or less as a junior partner under him. As the trial begins, the press has been dumbfounded.
“Many pundits,” writes the Jewish News Syndicate’s Jerusalem leg, Alex Traiman, “openly spoke of their hope for pictures of a guilt-ridden former prime minister, defeated at the ballot box, sitting depressed on the wooden benches of the Jerusalem District Court.” Yet , at Sunday’s arraignment, Mr. Traiman reports, “journalists and Israeli citizens witnessed an entirely different picture.”
What they saw was “a confident Netanyahu, backed by the top brass of his Likud Party.” Shortly before entering the courtroom, “a defiant Netanyahu turned the proceedings against the legal system, stating that the trial ‘is an attempted political coup against the will of the people.’” The premier declared that what was going on trial today “is an attempt to thwart the will of the nation.”
One of the charges against Mr. Netanyahu is that he allegedly did things sought by a newspaper and, allegedly, in return for the newspaper giving Mr. Netanyahu favorable coverage. If that turns out to be illegal, jeopardy would lurk for every editorial writer in the Milky Way. Newspapers praising politicians who do what they want is as American as a pie made from apples. It’s as Israeli as a falafel.
Not that this can’t end in tears. The prosecutors may win a conviction. The premier could end up in the clink. That, though, could take some time — even, we’re told, years. By then, the power sharing in the national unity government may have given the prime minister’s slot to General Benny Gantz. Or the constitutional illogic of a parliament prosecuting its own premier conceivably could bring the proceedings to a halt.
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