In a video statement released on Sunday, Israeli dictator Benjamin Netanyahu urged President Isaac Herzog to pardon him from his still-unresolved corruption charges from like six freaking years ago, with “Bibi” telling Herzog that he expects “anyone who wishes for the good of the country support this step,” Reuters reports. Herzog’s office acknowledged the request and said he passed it along to the country’s Ministry of Justice for consideration and a required recommendation.
It’s no mystery what the recommendation’s going to be since Justice Minister Yariv Levin is a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party and a close ally. Then Herzog makes the final call, though traditionally the Israeli president pretty much rubber stamps the amnesty. Traditionally being the key word here as traditionally offenders need be convicted first before they can apply for a pardon. And then there’s the fact that Ike and Benny kind of fucking hate each other and have for a while.
One extra wrinkle on the pre-conviction pardon thing though: The first one in Israeli history was issued in the 1980s to the defendants in the “Bus 300 affair.” None other than Isaac’s father, former President Chaim Herzog, pardoned four Shin Bet agents accused of summarily executing two Palestinians captured after they had hijacked a public bus full of civilians. Chaim cited national security as the pretext for letting them off the hook, the same argument “Bibi” is making now.
Also inconvenience. “I am required to testify three times a week… That is an impossible demand that is not made of any other citizen,” Bibi said in the video, six years after he’d been charged, a period during which as many as 100,000 men, women, and children living in Gaza and the West Bank were killed outright via kinetic action or starvation/disease wrought by his genocidal campaigns.