Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is testifying for the first time in his trial for corruption. He is the first sitting prime minister of Israel to face a criminal trial.
Netanyahu has begun his testimony by decrying that he’s on trial, says DW’s Emily Gordine from the courtroom.
He said he’d been waiting eight years to “tell my truth, to the best of my recollection.”
Then, he told the judges that “the most important regional event since the Sykes-Picot Act” had just unfolded and that the state’s needs should, therefore, be balanced against the trial’s needs, “which I recognize.”
“The only thing in front of me is the future of the state, not my own future,” he said, an apparent response to critics who argue that he has tied his future to the state’s future.
His remarks seem to be a reference to the current conflicts gripping the Gaza Strip and parts of the wider Middle East.
Netanyahu went on to say that his life has been a continuous struggle against Israeli media and public discourse in Israel. “I took criticism and attacks, insults, libel and lies to the extent that very few people and no one in Israel has ever had to face,” he said.
“It is simply absurd, just absurd,” he said, to claim that he got any hedonistic advantage through public life.
He also mentioned his wife, Sara, saying she had “been attacked worse than any prime minister’s wife in history.”
