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In Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s formal request for a pardon from corruption charges, which his lawyers sent to President Isaac Herzog at the end of November, Clause 62 urges Herzog to take into account his “tremendous public contribution to the State of Israel and Israeli society” in the field of security. This contribution, Netanyahu argues, stems from the fact that he “strengthened the perception that ‘Israel must defend itself on its own’” — a phrase placed in quotation marks, though it is not clear who is supposed to have said it.
The letter then lists the prime minister’s self-professed achievements in this regard: ordering preemptive strikes against Iranian-backed forces in Syria, expanding the Iron Dome missile defense system, establishing the National Cyber Directorate, and contributing to the “existential struggle” against Iran’s nuclear program with his speech to the U.S. Congress in 2015 and his decision to bomb Iran 10 years later. He also “ordered the assassination” of Hamas leaders Mohammed Deif, Ismail Haniyeh, and Yahya Sinwar, as well as commanding his troops to attack the top echelons of Hezbollah, which “ultimately led to the overthrow of the Assad regime in Syria.”
There is an obvious and rather significant security incident that is absent from this list: Hamas’ deadly surprise attack on October 7. The letter also ignores that the war in Gaza is not yet over on Israel’s own terms, as Hamas remains on its feet in half of the Strip. These omissions are not the result of a word-count restriction; the prime minister’s letter spans 13 pages, comprising only one part of a 111-page submission to the president.
But despite having been drafted by his lawyers, Netanyahu’s pardon request is not a legal document. It is a political-historical treatise reflecting his perception of his place in Israeli history and society — a window into his inner world after a total of 18 years in the prime minister’s chair and after two years of genocide in Gaza.
Many have already written about the fact that there is no admission of guilt to be found in the thousands of words making up this letter. “There is a better chance that the sun will not rise in the morning than that the prime minister will admit to an offense he did not commit,” Israel’s (Netanyahu-appointed) Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs told the media.
The idea that such an admission from Netanyahu would be in opposition to the laws of nature is telling in itself, but it is natural that the prime minister would not confess to the charges during an ongoing trial: If his pardon request is rejected, such a confession could count against him in the trial’s outcome.
Nevertheless, when one asks to be pardoned, we might expect to hear words of apology, sorrow, or at least some acknowledgment of a mistake. Something along the lines of “I may have made an error in my judgment,” or “It is possible that my actions have been misinterpreted and I regret that.” No such acknowledgement appears anywhere in Netanyahu’s letter.
Instead, the prime minister uses the request to go on the offensive. “He was and remains very critical of the law enforcement authorities’ conduct while handling our case,” his lawyers write. “The investigation focused on the person and not on the offense, while trying to find evidence that would incriminate the prime minister of committing any offense. This approach invited broad public and legal criticism.”
The indictment against him, the letter goes on, was filed “while the prime minister was on the White House lawn alongside President Trump, presenting the ‘Deal of the Century.’” And in a video message posted to his social media accounts last week, Netanyahu asserts in English — perhaps, this time, to an intended audience of President Donald Trump, who promoted the idea of pardoning Netanyahu during his speech in Israel’s Knesset in October — that he should be pardoned because “there are peace treaties to get.”
In other words, while Netanyahu is out dealing with matters of diplomacy and national security, the Attorney General’s Office is busy with nothingburgers.
A pardon without guilt
The prime minister’s central argument for why he should be pardoned is that it is necessary to foster reconciliation among a divided public. The letter argues that for many Israelis, Netanyahu’s trial has “been a source of frustration, difficulty, and a sense of injustice,” and has increased “tensions and disputes between the various authorities.”
But even here, on a matter that is completely non-legal, Netanyahu does not take any responsibility, refusing to express the slightest remorse or regret for his outsized role in stoking these divisions. And there is no retraction of his contemptuous comments about the investigations against him (“There is nothing [to be discovered] because there was nothing [done]”), nor any accounting for the blatant attacks he and his supporters have directed at the State Attorney’s Office, the attorney general, and the Supreme Court.
As far as Netanyahu’s role in Israeli history is concerned, the letter is firmly in the realm of megalomania. Rather than a last-ditch effort to save his own skin, the pardon request is apparently instead the mark of a man for whom “dedicating his life to serving the public is his life’s mission,” and who “thinks about the State of Israel and its citizens day and night.”
If there were any flaws in Netanyahu’s management of state affairs during his two decades in power, there is no mention of them in the letter. “The prime minister’s tremendous contribution to the State of Israel cannot be disputed,” the letter declares of a man against whom hundreds of thousands of Israelis have protested, many of them for five years in a row.
Netanyahu, the letter continues, has boosted the economy, strengthened Israel’s international standing, and “led a global struggle against Iran’s armament of nuclear weapons.” Clause 7 mentions the war in Gaza, but merely as a subsection of the war against Iran, Hezbollah, and the overthrow of the Assad regime.
“In parallel with all of this, the prime minister led the campaign to topple the Hamas regime and return our hostages from Hamas captivity,” it reads — without explaining the security failures that allowed those hostages to end up in Hamas’ hands in the first place, or noting Netanyahu’s deliberate moves to prolong the war in Gaza at the hostages’ expense.
Netanyahu worked, “alongside many good people,” for “Israel’s victory in this historic campaign,” it continues. For this reason, because Netanyahu’s success and Israel’s success are one and the same, “the good of the State of Israel and its citizens demands the end of the criminal proceedings.”
It is easy to find factual flaws in Netanyahu’s letter. After all, the killing of Yahya Sinwar in Gaza was not the result of the prime minister’s order to eliminate him, but rather of soldiers encountering him by chance. It is also difficult to buy Netanyahu’s narrative that he is the nation’s great conciliator when he was caught on camera almost 30 years ago — long before any criminal investigation against him was opened — whispering in the ear of a prominent rabbi that “the left has forgotten what it means to be Jewish.”
But that is beside the point: It is to be expected that a politician would contort reality in a way that presents them in the best light. The issue is that even when Netanyahu asks to be pardoned — that is, to be forgiven — he can’t point to a single thing that he did wrong.
Unquestioned force as state doctrine
A Hebrew-language Google search for the statement “Netanyahu: I was wrong” brings up only one real result: the prime minister’s confession that he made a mistake when he tweeted in late October 2023 that “all the security forces, including the head of intelligence and the head of the Shin Bet, assessed that Hamas was deterred and was turning toward a settlement [with Israel],” and that “under no circumstances and at no stage was Prime Minister Netanyahu warned of Hamas’ intentions of war.” Indeed, refraining from admitting to mistakes has characterized his entire behavior since the beginning of the war.
A New York Times investigation into the first days after October 7 quotes eyewitnesses as saying that Justice Minister Yariv Levin burst into tears at the first cabinet meeting after the Hamas attack (his spokesperson denied it), and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that “in 48 hours they will call for our resignations because of this mess, and they will be right.” Galit Distel-Atbaryan resigned from her ministerial post a few days into the war, explaining in an interview that “I was among the people who weakened the country, and this weakness in many ways led to the massacre.”
![A sticker blaming Israeli Prime Minister Benajmin Netanyahu for the October 7 massacre, reads "October 7 [happened] because of you" in Tel Aviv, December 5, 2025. (Miriam Alster/FLASH90)](https://static.972mag.com/www/uploads/2025/12/F241205MA019.jpg "A sticker blaming Israeli Prime Minister Benajmin Netanyahu for the October 7 massacre, reads “October 7 [happened] because of you” in Tel Aviv, December 5, 2025. (Miriam Alster/FLASH90)")
“Stop apologizing. Be Proud” was the campaign slogan that was meant to bring Naftali Bennett to the head of the right-wing camp in the 2014 election. But for Bennett (who now professes to lead the anti-Netanyahu camp), the slogan was a kind of parody; the very fact he recorded that famous video in the center of Tel Aviv testified to his understanding that he needed support from the same liberal camp that he was trying to scorn.
But today, the Israeli right is in a completely different place. Not only do they not apologize, but any expression of even minimal consideration or respect for those on the other side of the aisle — be it a politician, a journalist, the Military Advocate General, or the president of the Supreme Court, let alone Palestinians or leftists — is immediately seen as weakness.
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For such an era, there is no leader more suitable than Netanyahu. The mentality that makes him immune to statements such as “I’m sorry” or “I made a mistake” is precisely what makes him the perfect figurehead for the entire right-wing camp in Israel. And his pardon request is the ultimate manifestation of this trait.
But this ability not to apologize or admit to mistakes is necessary in today’s Israel for another reason, too, and not only on the right. After all, if Israeli society were to pause for a moment and think about the implications of their government’s policy toward the Palestinians — and toward the region as a whole — people might start to wonder whether violence is really the only option. In fact, they might understand that opting for violence by default is the source of Israel’s isolation and a threat to its very existence. Against these heretical thoughts, Netanyahu is the perfect remedy.
The tragedy of this whole affair is not that a corrupt leader is trying to obtain a pardon for his crimes, but rather that there is no political camp able to provide an alternative to Netanyahu’s singular vision: brute force, brute force, and more brute force. Instead, what we have is an opposition that is always on the defensive — which only strengthens Netanyahu and expands his sphere of influence — when what is required is one that unapologetically insists on human rights, equality, and the imperative to end occupation, apartheid, and genocide.
A version of this article was first published in Hebrew on Local Call. Read it here.
