The submission of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pardon request to President Isaac Herzog constitutes a legal, political, and national earthquake in Israel – and perhaps in the entire Middle East.
The application, filed by his attorney Amit Hadad, contains no admission of guilt and no acceptance of responsibility for the offenses alleged against Netanyahu. On the contrary: it stresses that Netanyahu’s personal interest would actually have been to see the judicial proceedings through to the end. Yet the national interest outweighs the personal one and makes it necessary to terminate the criminal proceedings by way of a pardon – so that Netanyahu can devote all his energy to the major political challenges in the Middle East and heal the rifts in Israeli society.
The request lays bare a fundamental paradox: Netanyahu, widely seen by many as having contributed decisively to societal polarization and the division of the nation, now claims that ending the trial through a pardon would enable him to mend precisely those rifts. The application portrays...
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