The Netanyahu trial is bigger than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself. If even after the publication of the allegations and the indictment, the public has not expressed an overwhelming vote of no confidence in the leader in free elections, it is safe to say that for the majority of Israelis, Netanyahu is innocent – and not because of what he has or has not done.
How can we explain the continued public support for Netanyahu – and the lack of confidence in his investigators and prosecutors? One way is to accuse Netanyahu of sowing distrust, planting misinformation, and leading a campaign of incitement against his investigators, the state attorney, and the legal system.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter
A second way is by heeding the echoes of history. The age-old politically-driven pronouncement from 1977 – no matter whether this was its exact formulation or a distortion – is to some extent the higher imperative of the Left, its supreme commandment: "The people should be replaced." Many consider the Netanyahu investigations and its trial, which is to begin today, the realization of this historic commandment in a different way: the people's choice should be replaced.
Up to a certain stage, the loyalists of the old regime – mostly in the legal system – were able to preserve a large part of their power even without having their hands on the state's helm. The rule of the bureaucrats continued to embody the spirit of the old regime under a new leader. But in the Netanyahu era, the majority – i. e., the sovereign – began to demand, ever more fiercely, its share of the pie, seeking to determine the character of the state systems of power. This public no longer compromises on its vision of a Jewish state, no longer renounces its will to express its heritage and tradition in education and culture, and seeks to dismantle the legal and social arrangements that granted an advantage to the values it opposes in the name of democracy.
The only way of removing the right from its position of direct influence on Israeli society and the state is to get rid of Netanyahu. It began with a media campaign; when this brutal tactic failed, his enemies moved on to a legal campaign. Netanyahu's supporters – and the opponents of the system – remember the words "the people should be replaced," connecting this assertion with the intense and powerful resistance to Netanyahu.
This is why the Netanyahu trial is bigger than Netanyahu. It is not only Netanyahu that the left wishes to undermine, but the popular choice; they seek to silence the group that understands that the rule of law is not the only thing enshrined by the bureaucrats at the Ministry of Justice on Salah al-Din Street in Jerusalem and the Civil Service Commission, backed by the robe-wearers on Givat Ram. The bureaucrats enshrine the law of the lawyers, which grants them an advantage in shaping the countenance of state and society.
This is why a large swath of the Israeli public sees the Netanyahu trial not just as a legal event, but as a political-media event of historic proportions. The outcome, they hope, will not necessarily reflect the struggle against Netanyahu's supposed corruption; it also involves the state's character. If the legal campaign succeeds, the café patrons and leftist television commentators will find it much easier to resume their engineering of public opinion. The political conclusions to be drawn will be clear: Netanyahu's supporters – the majority of the people – will know how to vote next time, the elected officials will distinguish right from wrong, and, above all, in the short run Netanyahu's removal will ensure the rise of an obedient leadership that will not threaten the system's power.
