Jewish Agency Chairman Isaac Herzog, who is seeking the presidency, was caught up in controversy in the public corruption trial of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday when it was revealed that he had referred to former Labor rival Shelly Yacimovich as a “bitch” in texts with former Walla CEO Ilan Yeshua.
In another day of cross-examination by defense lawyer Michal Rozin-Ozer before the Jerusalem District Court, Yeshua was asked about texts between him and Herzog in 2013 in which he put down Yacimovich.
After Herzog defeated Yacimovich in an internal Labor primary, he wrote Yeshua, “I would appreciate it if the headline will be ‘major victory for Herzog despite the attacks on him,’” and then added, “I need to demonstrate control and exclude the bitch.”
Yeshua responded: “Fine, I will handle it. I am in Hawaii, but I will give instructions to Avi [Alkalai, Walla editor].”
Herzog replied, “What fun!! Yes, please give the order.”
The defense raised this exchange as another example of Yeshua intervening in Walla news coverage on behalf of politicians other than Netanyahu.
They hope to convince the court that there was no media bribery scheme underlying Case 4000, the “Bezeq-Walla Affair,” but rather that Yeshua intervened in news coverage across the board.
Beyond the implications for the Netanyahu trial, however, the 2013 disclosure emerged at the worst possible time for Herzog, who hopes to win the presidency at the beginning of June.
Herzog responded to the disclosure saying that “words which I said in the middle of a hot political struggle in 2013 – with Shelly Yacimovich in the primaries at the time – were published this morning. Between political rivals, there are periods that are more and less fiery.
“Shelly and I have talked many times since that rocky period and we have moved on. But I still take this opportunity to apologize to her and to the public about these unnecessary statements which were inappropriate,” he said.
Despite Herzog’s apology, the current era has reached new levels of sensitivity about male condescension to women, and it is unclear if the revelation might impact his run for the presidency.
In addition, on Tuesday, Rozin-Ozer and the other defense lawyers went ballistic when the prosecution revealed that it had intended to withhold certain evidence from them, but accidentally sent the evidence to them anyway.
Generally speaking, the disputed evidence related to examples of Yeshua’s intervention in news coverage for third parties other than Netanyahu and major politicians like Herzog.
Prosecutor Yehudit Tirosh said that the prosecution was never obligated to hand over all messages on Yeshua’s cell phones if they did not have a parallel to Netanyahu.
She said, parallels relating to politicians like Herzog, were handed over to the defense.
Responding, the defense said that the prosecution could not make arbitrary decisions about which parallel cases might be relevant and which not.
Rozin-Ozer and the other lawyers said they were horrified that the prosecution was admitting it had tried to withhold evidence, and merely failed by incompetently sending an extra attachment to the defense that should not have been sent.
The judges appeared to side with the defense, though they did not necessarily assign to the prosecution any improper motivations.
It was unclear if this development would lead to new motions by the defense to disqualify prosecutorial evidence or a mistrial.