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Pardon This Disgrace: Inside Trump and the Jewish Far Right's Joint Venture to Absolve Netanyahu
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu submitted his request for a presidential pardon in his corruption cases last November, I wrote an analysis entitled "kicking the corpse," to describe what it meant for democracy. But it appears that I didn't have the imagination at the time to conceive of anything worse.
The latest stage of the legal procedure for achieving a presidential pardon, the recommendation by Israel's Justice Ministry to President Isaac Herzog this week, is obscenely worse.
First, a reminder that this entire anti-democratic nightmare began with a foreign leader, U.S. President Donald Trump, intervening in domestic Israeli affairs. Five years after his indictment, and mid-trial, Netanyahu asked for a pardon just weeks after Trump's leering comment ("Mr. President, why don't you give him a pardon?"
during a speech in the Knesset last October.
Trump's suggestion has since turned into a demand, and then became demented personal insults against President Herzog for not immediately producing the pardon. That's a gross violation of sovereignty, and just gross.
The latest stage of the legal procedure for achieving a presidential pardon, the recommendation by Israel's Justice Ministry to President Isaac Herzog this week, is obscenely worse.
First, a reminder that this entire anti-democratic nightmare began with a foreign leader, U.S. President Donald Trump, intervening in domestic Israeli affairs. Five years after his indictment, and mid-trial, Netanyahu asked for a pardon just weeks after Trump's leering comment ("Mr. President, why don't you give him a pardon?"
during a speech in the Knesset last October.
Trump's suggestion has since turned into a demand, and then became demented personal insults against President Herzog for not immediately producing the pardon. That's a gross violation of sovereignty, and just gross.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-politics/2026-03-27/ty-article/.premium/inside-trump-and-the-jewish-far-rights-joint-venture-to-pardon-netanyahu/0000019d-2b1d-dc71-a7ff-eb5f0e4d0000