Netanyahu has Trump’s slogans but not his immunity - analysis
What truly matters for Netanyahu is not what he does that is similar to Trump but what the US president has that he lacks.
By GIL HOFFMANUS PRESIDENT Donald Trump shakes hands with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as they pose in the Rose Garden at the White House this week(photo credit: REUTERS/LEAH MILLIS)
The Likud activists who attended Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s nearly hour-long address at Tel Aviv’s Dan Panorama Hotel on Monday night could have closed their eyes and imagined that they were at a rally of US President Donald Trump in America.They heard an impassioned attack on the media, the legal establishment and his political opponents. They received posters to hold up bearing Trump’s slogans translated into Hebrew, with the same colors and background.Netanyahu even put a group of young supporters in back of him to nod and applaud as he spoke, instead of the Likud’s candidates, just like at rallies of Trump.But what truly matters for Netanyahu is not what he does that is similar to Trump but what Trump has that Netanyahu does not: Immunity from prosecution.The US Justice Department’s official policy for decades has been that a sitting US president cannot be indicted. This was the policy when US presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton were facing impeachment.A US president not only cannot be prosecuted and convicted, he is “constitutionally immune” from even facing the indictments that Netanyahu already received. So in his speech to the Likud activists, Netanyahu pleaded for the immunity that Trump has. He praised immunity as a ”foundation stone of democracy.”He saved that controversial line for 50 minutes into the speech, long after boilerplate explanations about how he saved the Israeli economy that he had delivered countless times before. But Netanyahu could not hide his request for immunity from prosecution. No window-dressing could change the fact that he himself emphatically ruled out seeking immunity in the highest profile interview he has granted in years.The question is whether the immunity request will be forgotten by the time Israelis go to the polls on March 2. Blue and White will be determined to ensure the issue will be on voters’ minds when they cast their ballots.
Netanyahu could have decided not to seek the immunity that there is no majority for in the current Knesset and almost certainly will not be possible in the next one either. All he is really doing by seeking immunity from a Knesset that has no committee authorized to grant it is kicking the can down the road and postponing the start of his trial.Even if Netanyahu somehow got a majority for immunity after the election, Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit and the Supreme Court could still intervene to prevent him from avoiding prosecution.That is a scenario that Netanyahu may have to endure, but Trump, who has plenty of his own problems, does not need to worry about.
