Benjamin Netanyahu should be feeling on the top of the world. After years of fraught relations with the Obama administration, he was welcomed last month to the White House by President Donald Trump, with whom he shares rightwing politics, a hawkish view of the Muslim world and a loathing of the liberal media.
At home though, the four-term Israeli leader is caught up in a trio of police investigations that pose a serious threat to a politician dubbed “the magician” by members of his Likud party for his skill at holding on to power and staving off rivals for so long.
Israeli police are investigating allegations that Mr Netanyahu, his family and his inner circle improperly received tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of gifts — ranging from Cuban cigars to pink champagne and Mariah Carey concert tickets — from rich benefactors. Separately, the authorities are looking at whether he tried to strike a deal with a newspaper publisher to soften coverage of him ahead of the 2015 election. Mr Netanyahu was questioned under caution for a fourth time on Monday in connection with the corruption inquiries.
Potentially more serious is a justice ministry probe into alleged corruption around military procurement of boats and submarines, which was upgraded to a full criminal investigation last week. Mr Netanyahu has not been named as a suspect in the affair, but investigators are said to be looking at whether he played a role in the cancellation of a tender for four navy patrol boats, business that was then awarded to a unit of ThyssenKrupp, the German conglomerate. The scandal broke after it emerged late last year that, David Shimron, the prime minister’s family lawyer and second cousin, also represents a local sales representative for ThyssenKrupp’s marine systems subsidiary.
“A prime minister that decides to live like an oligarch, smokes $700-a-case cigars and drinks the most expensive champagne systematically at the expense of others is losing any moral grounds for being a public figure at the head of a democratic state,” says Erel Margalit, a centre-left MP, high-tech entrepreneur and vociferous critic of Mr Netanyahu, who has petitioned the Supreme Court to order an investigation of the boats affair. “This is not a banana republic.”
Maozia Segal, chairman of Ometz, an anti-corruption group in Israel, claims that what is known so far is “just the tip of the iceberg” and warns that the police investigations are preoccupying Mr Netanyahu when he should be fully focused on running the country.
“They should make it very quick,” Mr Segal says. “It’s not the prime minister that’s getting hurt — it’s the country that’s getting hurt.”
Even in a country that has seen past prime ministers investigated before — and in one case, even serve time — the Netanyahu probes have captivated the public and caused some to question Israel’s near-term political future.
The three probes, called Case 1000, Case 2000 and Case 3000 by police, have dominated headlines since November and brought calls by opposition lawmakers for Mr Netanyahu to resign.
The prime minister denies any wrongdoing, accusing what he calls Israel’s leftist media of conducting a “Bolshevik manhunt” against him. “They are applying constant pressure to the attorney-general and the law enforcement agencies to indict me at all costs,” Mr Netanyahu said in January. “There has not been anything like this in the country’s history.”
If any of the police probes were to result in charges being brought against Mr Netanyahu, it would shake Israeli politics and raise constitutional issues, as there is no precedent or law dictating whether a sitting prime minister charged with a crime needs to resign.
Police have confirmed the rough outlines of their investigations, but have released few details. Unnamed sources have leaked a generous flow of damaging disclosures to Israel’s Channel 2 and Channel 10 television stations and the leftwing newspaper Ha’aretz.
One common thread in the cases is the allegation of corruption arising from the proximity of wealthy Israelis and foreigners to Mr Netanyahu, his family and his circle. Several people who are part of the investigation live in Caesarea, an elite Mediterranean community where the prime minister has a house.
His next-door neighbour there is James Packer, the Australian media heir and casino mogul who is one of at least two billionaire friends of the Netanyahus under scrutiny in the gifts affair. According to Israeli media, police want to question the Australian in connection with gifts given to Yair Netanyahu, the prime minister’s son, said to include a flight and a hotel stay, when the elder Mr Netanyahu addressed the UN General Assembly in New York in October 2015.
Unlike most foreigners who take up residence in Israel, Mr Packer is not Jewish. Australian and Israeli media have speculated that he did so to take advantage of generous tax breaks offered to foreigners who live there more than half the year. A spokesman for Mr Packer declined to comment, and Israel’s tax office would not confirm that the Australian billionaire had opened a tax file — the first step toward becoming an Israeli resident for tax purposes.
The 2008 law aimed at luring wealthy expats to Israel is nicknamed the “Milchan Law”, after the Israeli-born Hollywood film producer Arnon Milchan, another principal in the gifts probe. While Mr Milchan is not commenting publicly on the investigation, Israeli media have reported that he told police that he regularly supplied Mr and Mrs Netanyahu, at their request, with cigars and champagne. Ha’aretz also reported that Mr Milchan gave Mrs Netanyahu jewellery worth 10,000 shekels ($2,700) last year as a birthday gift. According to the paper, Mr Netanyahu approached Dan Shapiro, the former US ambassador to Israel, to help Mr Milchan secure a 10-year US visa.
Mr Netanyahu has not denied receiving gifts, which would only be a crime in Israel if prosecutors could prove that he gave the donors something in return. Mrs Netanyahu, too, has not denied receiving wine or other presents as gifts given on a friendly basis, but has denied the report about jewellery. Mr Milchan’s office declined to comment on the allegations.
Case 2000 focuses on talks Mr Netanyahu held with Arnon Mozes, publisher of the Yedioth Ahronoth daily, before the 2015 election, allegedly to persuade the newspaper to tone down its critical coverage of him. In a series of conversations, apparently taped by an aide to Mr Netanyahu and now in possession of the police, the prime minister asked the publisher to recruit journalists who would “lower their level of hostility toward him from 9.5 to 7.5”.
In exchange, Mr Netanyahu broached the possibility of weakening the commercial clout of Israel Hayom, the free newspaper funded by rightwing Jewish-American billionaire Sheldon Adelson, which is so favourable to the prime minister that it is nicknamed “the Bibi paper”. According to the tape transcripts published in the Israeli press, Mr Netanyahu brought up the possibility of legislation, saying he would raise the matter with “the redhead”— an apparent reference to Mr Adelson — but no such law was ever passed. Mr Adelson, through a spokesman, declined to comment.
It is Case 3000, however, involving the procurement of naval boats and submarines, that has preoccupied Israelis most. Police are examining the cancellation of an international tender to supply Israel’s navy with four corvettes meant to guard its gas rigs. According to Mr Margalit, the opposition MP, suppliers from five countries were vying to supply the boats. The tender was cancelled and the deal awarded to ThyssenKrupp’s marine unit in 2014. Police are also looking at a decision to buy three submarines from the German company under a different contract to add to the Israeli navy’s fleet of six — a deal which Moshe Ya’alon, then defence minister, now says he opposed.
The scandal surfaced in November after Raviv Drucker, an investigative journalist, reported that Mr Shimron — Mr Netanyahu’s family attorney — also counts Miki Ganor, a sales representative in Israel for ThyssenKrupp, as a client. Announcing the criminal investigation last week, Israel’s justice minister said there was evidence that raised reasonable suspicion “that some of those involved in the affair committed crimes of public corruption”.
“For many years, Germany was part of a government-to-government deal with Israel,” says Mr Margalit. “How did middlemen get in between?”
The boats sit in a sensitive area of Israeli security. While they are meant to protect offshore gas rigs, the submarine fleet would also supply a “second strike” capability against a regional enemy like Iran. Mr Netanyahu, who has made security issues the bedrock of his political career, is already on the defensive after the state comptroller last week released a scathing report on his government’s conduct of the 2014 Gaza war.
Mr Shimron denies any wrongdoing and says his law firm maintains a “Chinese wall” between the work it does for the prime minister and any other business to avoid conflicts of interest.
“All our activity with regard to this matter was done according to the law, and in strict compliance with the conflict of interest agreement with the government by which I am bound,” Mr Shimron told the Financial Times.
ThyssenKrupp launched an internal investigation after questions were raised over the Israeli procurement deal. The German group confirms that Mr Ganor is its Israeli sales partner, but says it was not informed that Mr Shimron was acting as his legal counsel.
While some Israelis believe the probes expose a rot at the heart of their country, others say they attest to the rude health of Israel’s democratic institutions, including justice authorities and the free press.
Israeli police have investigated two former prime ministers, the late Ariel Sharon and Ehud Barak. A third, Ehud Olmert, is serving a jail sentence for bribery and obstruction of justice. Moshe Katsav, a former president, was recently released from prison after serving five years of a seven-year term for rape, sexual harassment and other crimes.
“We have a former prime minister in jail, a president who was in jail and an incumbent prime minister under observation,” says Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute. “However, if you look at measures like Transparency International’s rankings, Israel is not a corrupt country.”
The authorities have investigated Mr Netanyahu before. In one long-running case, dubbed “Bibi Tours”, it was alleged that the prime minister and his family received free trips from foreign backers, perhaps illegally. Avichai Mendelblit, the attorney-general, recently dropped the investigation.
Mr Netanyahu, a consummate survivor who is on track to become the longest-serving prime minister in Israeli history, has warned the media and rivals not to write his political obituary yet. “Shift down a gear,” he said recently. “I’m going to be with you for a long time to come.”
The description of Australian businessman James Packer in this article was updated on March 7
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