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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Netanyahu Indicted

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65Comments

  1. 1.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    The moral arc of the universe is long, but it eventually bends towards justice. Shit eventually catches up with everyone. Even the Netanyahus and the Trumps of the world

  3. 3.

    Adam L Silverman

    The state prosecutor in Israel has stated the following:

    https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/report-state-prosecutor-says-netanyahu-cant-form-government-under-indictment/

    Report: State prosecutor says Netanyahu can’t form government under indictment

    State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan is reportedly saying in closed meetings that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won’t be able from now on to receive the mandate to form a government due to the criminal charges against him.

    Sources within the Justice Ministry are quoted by the Globes website as saying Nitzan has said that while the law allows a premier to keep serving under an indictment and doesn’t compel him to resign, past Supreme Court rulings support the thesis that he cannot form a government when facing charges.

    Nitzan refuses to comment on the report, and his office says that “no decision has been made yet on the matter.”

    Bibi is, of course, calling it a coup and calling for an investigation of the investigators.

    https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/netanyahu-denounces-charges-as-attempted-coup/

    Netanyahu says charges against him are ‘an attempted coup’

    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responds to the charges announced against him, saying they are “an attempted coup against a prime minister.”

    “I dedicated my life for the state,” he says in a press statement from his Jerusalem residence. “I fought for it, was injured for it and am very proud for that. But this is a sad day. One needs to be blind to not see that something bad is happening in the legal system.”

    He goes on to say the investigations were “infected” by ulterior motives and are “selective enforcement on steroids.” He criticizes the timing, saying the announcement comes at the “most sensitive time politically since the establishment of the state.”

    https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/investigate-the-investigators-pm-says-calling-for-commission-of-inquiry/

    ‘Investigate the investigators,’ PM says, calling for commission of inquiry

    After a long public defense of himself in light of the charges against him, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls for an inquiry into the investigators in charge of the probes against him.

    “We need to investigate the investigators and the state prosecution which cooks these infected cases,” he says.

  8. 8.

    Patricia Kayden

    PS/ In short, I keep hearing that career civil servants "disagreed with Trump's Ukraine policy," but it seems our career civil servants were *executing* the nation's *longstanding* Ukraine policy in the *absence* of Trump creating his own—as he simply didn't care enough to do so.— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) November 21, 2019

  10. 10.

    Scott P.

    How do you spend $200,000 on cigars and booze?

     

    <IMG SRC=”https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/en.futurama/images/1/1c/LeGrandCigar.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/180?cb=20110615140538″>

     

    <IMG SRC=”https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fpm1.narvii.com%2F6248%2F1a0ad45d7e808c072b1cdb02cda51a967118e464_00.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Faminoapps.com%2Fc%2Ffuturama%2Fpage%2Fitem%2Fmaltese-liquor%2F42nG_VglIvIonaLQWjbRZ1ZYMd7jvGBoEqM&tbnid=QEvobF8MeSSPDM&vet=12ahUKEwjAwYzQpPzlAhUb96wKHXiID44QMygBegUIARDbAQ..i&docid=YZzntCoeYpjPrM&w=186&h=209&q=futurama%20maltese%20liquor&ved=2ahUKEwjAwYzQpPzlAhUb96wKHXiID44QMygBegUIARDbAQ”>

  11. 11.

    Patricia Kayden

    What Trump did wasn’t minor or just stupid. A president seeking foreign interference to help his re-election is as bad as it gets. That he used extortion and urgently needed aid to an ally under attack puts it beyond the pale.— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) November 21, 2019

  12. 12.

    trollhattan

    “It’s all right there, in Hillary’s server, the information that will exonerate me.”

    I’ve seen this movie. New material, Bibi, you’re swimming in somebody’s wake here.

  13. 13.

    mdblanche

    I also understand Israel is more likely than not facing another election soon. Does anybody have any idea how all of these things together are supposed to play out?

  14. 14.

    Another Scott

    @Scott P.: 1) Mere mortals can’t post images in comments here.

     

    2) You have to click on the “Text” tab in the editor to post your own HTML and have it work correctly.

     

    HTH.

     

    Cheers,

    Scott.

  16. 16.

    kindness

    The receipts say champagne and cigars because the hookers wouldn’t give receipts for the coke.

  17. 17.

    Avalune

    Since this is an open thread, can I just whine a little about having to work 12 hours today? This week man. Poop on it!

     

    Re the cigars and whatnot – you have to have something fancy to go with the ostrich jackets and whatever the hell other idiotic stuff these guys keep spending mass amounts of money on? Also, their spending creates jobs right? And good economy right? Right? Trickles down and all that.

  18. 18.

    Roger Moore

    @Scott P.:

    Honestly, $200k on cigars and champagne isn’t completely outlandish when you consider:

    1. That’s spread out over several years
    2. It’s someone else’s money, so they’re probably buying conspicuous consumption grade products, e.g. $300/bottle vintage champagne, not the stuff plebs would buy
    3. A politician may be sharing the goods with followers by throwing victory parties, handing out gifts, etc.
  21. 21.

    The Moar You Know

    raises important questions like how the hell you spend $200K on cigars and champagne.

    If someone wants to give me $200k I damn sure will try my very best.  I’m thinking odds of success are about 30%.

  23. 23.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Patricia Kayden: That’s not exactly true. The National Security Strategy, which was produced by the National Security Staff in 2017, has a very detailed section about Russia, its activity, what its doing in eastern Europe, etc. And the President signed the document and authorized its release. We have a Russia policy, we have an Ukraine policy, we have an eastern Europe policy. The President simply doesn’t care about official US policies.

  24. 24.

    Martin

    I’ve been at parties with 7 figure champagne budgets. 2 bottles per guest. And not cheap stuff. Those are good fucking parties, let me tell you.

  25. 25.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Roger Moore:

    Having read the article, that number is actually expensive gifts given to Netenyahu by a businessman as bribes.  Cigars and champagne are merely the biggest items.  In return, Netenyahu gave him blatant government favors, not just ‘pick one contract out of a dozen’ stuff.

  27. 27.

    Adam L Silverman

    @mdblanche: They will have another election in approximately 90 days. Provided that the Israeli electorate continues to return similar results, with Likud and Kol laVan (Blue and White) having almost the same plurality of seats, with the rest of the votes distributed the way they’ve been, neither side will be able to form a government without the following happening.

    1. Avigdor Lieberman convinces Likud to jettison the ultra-religious parties and Kol laVan to jettison the Joint list Arab party and form a national unity Zionist government.
    2. For this to happen, Likud also has to jettison Bibi. That may happen, but I wouldn’t want to lay a wager on it.
    3. Gantz would also have to jettison the Joint List and I’m not sure he and his coalition are prepared to do that.
    4. If, as The Times of Israel reported and I noted in comment 3, an indicted Prime Minister is not allowed by law to form a new government when his government ends, then even if Likud wins the larger plurality or has the larger potential coalition, Likud will not be allowed to form a government unless they get rid of Bibi.

    That’s about where we’re at.

  30. 30.

    Roger Moore

    @Adam L Silverman:

    The President simply doesn’t care about official US policies.

    I’m not sure how much of this is him not caring about official US policies and how much is him not understanding the system well enough to change them.  I get the impression he believes his public pronouncements override the official documents he signs.

  31. 31.

    Fleeting Expletive

    I would like to shoot down this inane cop-out from Republican senators like my own Lankfort: “Oh I’m to be a Juror, so I couldn’t possibly comment on impeachment.”    Fine, let’s see how you do on voir dire.  Are you unbiased, with an open mind?  Will you try to absorb factual evidence from credible people?  WIll you refrain from forming or expressing an opinion until your vote? Will you avoid partisan media, etc.

    It isn’t a jury situation, you are one percent of the group of citizens who had best bring your highest possible reverence for our nation’s laws, history, and values.  You are charged with shedding your partisan security blanket and your ignorance at every stage.

    I get upset about this imagined talk with my senator because his sanctimonious, oleaginous smug face … blech.

  32. 32.

    Jay

    Gag,…..

    if you're the type of person who doesn't want to see images of a 2020 sex calendar starring Jacob Wohl's dad, i suggest you logging off from this site until at least Monday at the latest— Gene Park (@GenePark) November 21, 2019

  33. 33.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Roger Moore: My understanding, and while I’ve never discussed it with him as he and I haven’t been in touch since 2016, nor his former deputy when I saw her last year, LTG McMaster and his senior staff ran everything past the President, by everything I mean the top lines of the National Security Strategy as in “this is the official policy as we’ve written based on our understanding of your position, is that correct?” past him before they fleshed it out. He was given a review copy after it went out for staffing and was revised, and, according to the reporting, he signed off on it.

  34. 34.

    Another Scott

    @Roger Moore: Alternatively, 1) he could be a Bannon disciple and be breaking the old international order intentionally just because; 2) he could be a Putin disciple and be causing chaos in the US and the West intentionally to increase Russia’s comparative power.

     

    There are lots of choices between disinterested and stupid/brain damaged.

     

    ¿Por qué no los tenemos todos?

     

    Unfortunately.  :-(

     

    Cheers,

    Scott.

  36. 36.

    Roger Moore

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    And my point is that we don’t know for sure how many of those gifts Netanyahu consumed personally and how many he passed on to get favors from people lower on the food chain.  How much of his legendary ability to assemble coalitions is a result of straight up bribery?

  37. 37.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Roger Moore: The coalition formation bribery is much less subtle. He promised the very small, ultra-religious, ultra-nationalist (Zionist), and/or ultra-religious and ultra-nationalist parties the ministries they wanted to control so they could remake Israel through manipulation of the government. That’s how those groups and parties and members of Knesset were coopted.

  39. 39.

    waysel

    @Adam L Silverman: Is this a document you could share? I haven’t watched much testimony, but I’m surprised this is not mentioned more frequently. The R’s are trying to accuse all these diplomats of defying the presidents wishes as if there exists no NatSec policy other than presidential whims.

  40. 40.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Jay: At some point they’re gonna open fire, like Kent State and Jackson State. The question is, will that increase the protests or tamp them down?

  45. 45.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Increase them, of course. How is that even a question? Especially if they’re middle class liberals who get gunned down. Like the Women’s March. Or some other organized mass protest with a lot of middle-to-upper class professionals

  46. 46.

    trollhattan

    O/T but Middle East related, watched the Frontline episode “For Sama” made by a Syrian journalist living in Aleppo during the revolution and subsequent siege. She begins as a university student than over the course of events meets and marries a doctor and has a daughter, to whom the title is addressed. Gripping, horrid, heartfelt, helped me sort out just how cruel and monstrously the Assad regime and Russia behaved there. And the “winners” are never hauled before the Hague.

  48. 48.

    Adam L Silverman

    @waysel: Almost all of this stuff is posted on outward facing websites. So if you want past ones, to compare, just type in Obama National Security Strategy, just keyword search that. Same with either the current or past National Defense Strategies, Quadrennial Defense Reviews, the National Diplomatic Strategy the Obama administration put out on Secretary Clinton’s prompting, as well as almost all the joint and Service specific doctrinal publications. Just keyword search for what you want and you should be able to find it unless it’s classified.

  50. 50.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Yarrow: The more important one is Avigdor Lieberman’s. Lieberman has long been rumored to be Putin’s and the Russian mob’s man in Israel.

  52. 52.

    Adam L Silverman

    @debbie: He was unable to and his mandate has expired. New elections will be held next year. Most likely the end of January.

  53. 53.

    Jay

    @Matt McIrvin:

     

    when the Hong Kong protestors seized the Parliament Building, they spraypainted in Mandarin and Cantonese, grafitti adressed to the Legislature,

     

    ”Peaceful Protest does not work.

     

    You taught me that.”

     

    in much of the West, what changes or doesn’t change, in the next 5 years or less,  will determine of democracy survives, if capitalism survives.

     

    meanwhile, the Billionaires and their toadies are worried about civillity and slight tax increases.

  54. 54.

    debbie

    @Patricia Kayden:

     

    Thank god the hearings are over. Nunes has run out of descriptors (bizarro world, etc.). I was afraid he’d be forced to call this “poopie time” or something similar.

     

    And what an ass Jordan was, with all his yelling and interruptions and not allowing Hill to respond. Bet he wouldn’t have been so harsh if she had been a man.

  58. 58.

    Roger Moore

    @Another Scott:

    The question is not why Trump is doing the stuff he’s doing.  The question is why what he is doing unofficially doesn’t match our official policy when he is (at least nominally) the one setting the policy. One of the things that has come out in the impeachment hearings is that members of the foreign affairs bureaucracy have been working at cross purposes to Trump’s personal representatives.  That isn’t just because the foreign affairs people are members of the blob carrying out the blob’s plans in contradiction of Trump’s official policy; they’re actually following his official policy while he isn’t.

    Adam Silverman has a couple of comments describing how those policies are made, and Trump could change them if he wanted to and knew how to work the system to do so.  So we’re left with the conclusion that he either doesn’t want to change the official policy or he doesn’t know how.  If he doesn’t want to change the official policy, it may be because he’s worried about the public perception (e.g. he knows people will be skeptical of us suddenly becoming buddy buddy with Russia) or because his personal plans are actually illegal (e.g. what was happening with Ukraine).  If he’s unable, it’s presumably because the foreign policy establishment (aka The Blob) is resisting and he doesn’t know how to make them do what he wants.

  59. 59.

    Another Scott

    @Roger Moore: Ok, but I think my snarky points still stand.

     

    If he wants to create chaos, it’s much better to have an official policy that says one thing, but a simultaneous Trumpian “policy” that says 3 contradictory things at once and changes depending on whether some one was “unfair” to him on TV.

     

    Yes, he doesn’t care about policy.  He’s shown he’s incapable of understanding policy as well.  He doesn’t care about briefings or much of anything else but trying to profit off his office.  One of the ways he’s trying to do that is to be unpredictable and to be the essential gatekeeper that everyone has to please.

     

    Remember what he said about the Great Recession – (roughly) “Recessions are great because it lets me buy up stuff on the cheap.”   Peace and prosperity are his enemy.  He wants everyone (but his family and other richy-rich types that he aspires to be) immiserated because he thinks that’s the best way to get ahead.  He doesn’t believe in “we both win”, he wants everyone else to lose.  A tactic in that effort is to keep everyone else off-balance…

     

    My $0.02.

     

    Cheers,

    Scott.

  60. 60.

    Roger Moore

    @Another Scott:

    I’m not sure Trump’s unpredictability is about trying to create chaos for chaos’s sake.  I think that’s hiding something simpler: he’s angling for a personal payoff.  That looks like he’s acting chaotically to people who can’t see everything that’s happening, but his behavior is perfectly logical to people who know when the bribe has been paid.  It also doesn’t fit nicely into conventional policy documents and briefings, which are focused on what’s good for the country.

  61. 61.

    JaySinWA

    @Roger Moore: I think you are ascribing too much rationality to Trump. He rejects any view of reality that he doesn’t care for in the moment. In the next moment he is perfectly willing to imagine a different reality. The paper trail is non-binding. People must accept his view of reality no matter how it conflicts with prior dictates. Process be damned, what he says goes, until it doesn’t

    ETA I’ll take bribes as a secondary answer @Roger Moore:, they impact his vision of reality. As does flattery. There is a desperate need to feed his ego.

  62. 62.

    Ken

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    gifts given to Netanyahu as bribes

    That explodes my theory of how you can spend $200K on cigars and champagne.

    1. Vlad “the Meathook” Putinovich spends $200K at a business you own, to buy an ostrich-skin bow tie or some other ridiculously-marked-up item.
    2. You, not wanting to be “on the hook”, turn around and spend that $200K at Vlad’s cousin’s tobacco and spirits shop, also on ridiculously-marked-up items.
    3. Laundry complete.

    I guess it still works for certain other businesses, like hotels that charge ten times the going rate to people who aren’t actually staying in the room.

  63. 63.

    Roger Moore

    @Ken:

    I guess it still works for certain other businesses, like hotels that charge ten times the going rate to people who aren’t actually staying in the room.

    I definitely wonder how much of the high-end art market is driven by money laundering.  Not the ultra-high stuff that gets headlines for somebody setting a record, but a tier or two down, where you’re still dealing with more money than most people will earn in their lifetime.

  64. 64.

    Ruckus

    @Roger Moore:

    Well he is the child king.

    Isn’t is swell that we get a 5 yr old playing monarchy with the country?

    And I have to enter my name/email for the first time in a week. Super.

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