The headlines in the written and electronic media dealt this past Monday with the testimony of billionaire Arnon Milchan, who occupies a slot in Case One Thousand, in which Netanyahu is accused of breach of trust.
On the first day Milchan testified for almost six hours straight regarding his ties with the Netanyahu couple and about the very generous gifts he gave them. The columnists extracted the juicy parts from the testimony which just prove that these gifts were part of the ongoing friendship between the billionaire and the Netanyahu.
Incidentally, this same billionaire also gave valuable presents to many others, including Knesset members and public figures, including — and who not? — Opposition Head Yair Lapid.
It was a spicy, entertaining testimony, and it appears that Milchan enjoyed presenting it, himself. Even more interesting is the fact that the local media employs the same modus operandi so that when the prosecution sends a witness from its side, it steers him so that his testimony will serve its purposes and prove, as it were, that illegal acts are involved. That's how it was when central state witnesses took their stand in the bribery case, Case 4000. At that time, every word found its place in the main media headlines.
But then came the turn of the defense. Netanyahu's attorneys discredited them and pulverized their testimonies, not leaving a stone unturned — until even the judges arrived at a conclusion that the allegation of bribery was altogether unfounded and should be dismissed. But in order for anyone to find out these things, it was necessary to dig deep into the newspapers or the minor news of the media, which did not much deal with those excerpts when all of the testimonies were discredited and it was realized that all those allegations were tailored, amateurish and totally unfounded.
Netanyahu's lawyers upturned the central testimonies of those state witnesses, past supporters, making a mockery of them. The media shunted them aside to the margins and always found matters that it was more interested in to review.
This technique repeats itself with the Milchan testimony. So long as the prosecution interrogates him, he will star in the headlines but when the defense attorneys will join it with that of Nir Hefetz and Shlomo Filber, two central prosecution witnesses who, during their testimony, were transformed into essential defense witness pro-Netanyahu, then the readers will have to excavate within the inner pages in order to learn how even these testimonies were vapid and meaningless with regard to the criminal charges.
