Netanyahu Interfered 230 Times With News Site Coverage

Israeli demonstrators gather for a demonstration against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outside his official residence in Jerusalem, calling upon him to resign on Nov. 28, 2020. Photo by AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP via Getty Images.
Israeli demonstrators gather for a demonstration against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outside his official residence in Jerusalem, calling upon him to resign on Nov. 28, 2020. Photo by AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP via Getty Images.
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Netanyahu Interfered 230 Times With News Site Coverage

Israeli demonstrators gather for a demonstration against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outside his official residence in Jerusalem, calling upon him to resign on Nov. 28, 2020. Photo by AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP via Getty Images.
Israeli demonstrators gather for a demonstration against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outside his official residence in Jerusalem, calling upon him to resign on Nov. 28, 2020. Photo by AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP via Getty Images.

An amended indictment against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu filed by the State Prosecutor’s Office on Sunday details 230 instances in which Netanyahu or members of his family sought to improve coverage of them on the Walla news website while he served as communications minister.

In the most serious of the three cases against him - known as Case 4000 - Netanyahu is accused of providing regulatory benefits to Bezeq, the country’s largest telecommunications group, in exchange for positive media coverage on its news site Walla.

The amended version of the so-called Case 4000 removed all language referring to Netanyahu's family, zeroing in on the premier alone.

In addition, the prosecution listed in the amended indictment 315 incidents in which various Netanyahu family members or other intermediaries of the prime minister demanded that the Walla website give them more positive coverage.

Last May, Attorney General Avichai Mandelbilt officially delivered the Israeli Prime Minister’s indictment to Knesset Speaker -- Netanyahu will stand trial for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust in three different corruption cases.

While his trial was scheduled back then, his lawyers obstructed the court’s activity. However, the Israel Judicial Authority announced a strict schedule that stipulates holding three sessions every week starting Jan 6.



ICC Opens Inquiry into Hungary for Failing to Arrest Netanyahu

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Budapest earlier this month. (AFP)
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Budapest earlier this month. (AFP)
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ICC Opens Inquiry into Hungary for Failing to Arrest Netanyahu

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Budapest earlier this month. (AFP)
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Budapest earlier this month. (AFP)

Judges at the International Criminal Court want Hungary to explain why it failed to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he visited Budapest earlier this month.

In a filing released late Wednesday, The Hague-based court initiated non-compliance proceedings against Hungary after the country gave Netanyahu a red carpet welcome despite an ICC arrest warrant for crimes against humanity in connection with the war in Gaza.

During the visit, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced his country would quit the court, claiming on state radio that the ICC was “no longer an impartial court, not a court of law, but a political court.”

The Hungarian leader, regarded by critics as an autocrat and the EU’s most intransigent spoiler in the bloc’s decision-making, defended his decision to not arrest Netanyahu.

“We signed an international treaty, but we never took all the steps that would otherwise have made it enforceable in Hungary,” Orbán said at the time, referring to the fact that Hungary’s parliament never promulgated the court’s statute into Hungarian law.

Judges at the ICC have previously dismissed similar arguments.

The ICC and other international organizations have criticized Hungary’s defiance of the warrant against Netanyahu. Days before his arrival, the president of the court’s oversight body wrote to the government in Hungary reminding it of its “specific obligation to comply with requests from the court for arrest and surrender.”

A spokesperson for the ICC declined to comment on the non-compliance proceedings.

Hungary’s decision to leave the ICC, a process that will take at least a year to complete, will make it the sole non-signatory within the 27-member European Union. With 125 current signatory countries, only the Philippines and Burundi have ever withdrawn from the court as Hungary intends.

Hungary has until May 23 to submit evidence in its defense.