Welcome back to the GangstaYid Guide to Israelex5, brought to you live and with fond hopes to survive _{(unworthy government, global climate collapse, my own foibles, the vagaries of fate…)}. Yes, you finally made it to the juicy stuff – the desperate cupidity of Israel’s temporarily distressed God-Emperor and his bubbly-lovin’ missus. The final big story in the past week, as promised, was explosive testimony in Benjamin Netanyahu’s personal corruption case – aka Case 1000, or “The Gifts Case”.

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— GangstaYid🎗️ (@BaalShemDov) July 18, 2022

The gist: Netanyahu is accused of receiving regular gifts of high end luxury items (ranging from Cohiba 56 [NOT 54!] cigars and pink champagne, through jewelry and designer clothing and accessories in the 4-5 dollar-figure range, up to free use of a fully stocked villa, conveniently located right next to their own and purchased at their instruction. By whom? James Packer, Australian billionaire and one-time boyfriend of Mariah Carey, who bought the villa and some of the other stuff; and by Arnon Milchan, an Israeli billionaire, who was on the hook for most of the bubbly and Cubanos, and who actually introduced Packer to Bibi as a way to lighten his own financial burden associated with the cultivation of a native potentate. While Packer (an apparently unstable person who developed an obsession with Jews, Israel, and Netanyahu as a sort of second coming, and also provided Netanyahu Jr. free use of his NYC luxury suite) was mostly a sap in all this, Milchan got material rewards, like Netanyahu intervening for him with U.S. immigration authorities (his 10-year visa renewal was being held up on some suspicion of shenanigans or other) and business/tax affairs in Israel.

Netanyahu’s defense (which has no legs. 1000 is the most open and shut case of the three against him) is that the Milchans were dear personal friends of his and Sara’le, and you’re allowed to receive gifts from friends. So to break this down:

1. No, not when you’re PM you’re not. Not in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is spelled out by law and was made abundantly clear to Netanyahu after the end of his 1^st term as PM (1996-1999,) when he likewise got in trouble for receiving… “emoluments,” to put it in Yankee terms. He was let off back then under the erroneous assumption that his political career was over and it wouldn’t be relevant again. Oh, my sweet summer child…
2. Yeah, “friends” don’t send their “friends” regular orders for refills like I do with my weed dealer. Friends are allowed to see each other without bringing an expensive gift. The explosive witness, one Hadas Klein _{(Personal assistant to Milchan and in part concurrently Packer’s rep in Israel, who personally attended to the regular delivery of the “gifts”,)} testified that “there was no such thing as meeting them and not bringing something.”) I might add that I’m more polite with my telegrass dude than these schmucks were with their “friends.” Friends also reciprocate. Klein testified that the most the Netanyahus reciprocated was a cheap watch and something or other from the low-cost toy store chain “for the kids.” Now, the defense countered this with a photo of Amanda Milchan, standing with Sara like good friends, wearing some necklace. The defense claimed that this necklace was bought by the Netanyahus. Now a picture may be worth a thousand words, but in this context? A receipt would be worth a thousand pics. Just sayin’.
3. This one’s hilarious. So as the demands for cee-gars, bubbly, and the occasional anniversary bling (yes, Netanyahu had another man buy his anniversary gifts for him…) got more regular, and piled up to the point where Klein was beginning to wonder if she was doing something improper, and Milchan (“a frugal man” as Klein was forced to concede on the stand) ordered Klein to tally up “what the Netanyahus are costing him”, the Nut-and-yahoos attempted to allay Klein’s concern by saying “we got a legal opinion that says that if it’s not an apartment, it’s allowed” (lie, but it gets better.) Remember I said “use of a fully stocked villa”? Netanyahu sees that he has this wide-eyed, star-struck man-child with billions to his name who worships him without question. So he has Packer buy the villa adjacent to Bibi’s own in Caesarea – and since Packer is not in Israel all that often, basically place it at the disposal of the Famiglia Bibi. The Bibs, the missus, and their boys treated the place as a staycation property, enjoying the run of a stocked luxury villa without having to live in it once they made a mess. They’d decamp back across the fence to their own crib, which was cleaned in the meantime on the state’s dime, and leave Packer’s place to be cleaned on Packer’s dime. So “if it’s not an apartment you’re allowed”. And if it’s a villa? Oh, he didn’t transfer it to your name so it’s ok?

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— GangstaYid🎗️ (@BaalShemDov) July 18, 2022

Klein’s testimony, delivered calmly and without rancor (although she did get emotional and indignant once, when describing how Sara accused her of stealing something and tried to get her fired), had even some cultists expressing second thoughts. This, however, had no immediate effect in the polls, which, on aggregate, have Likud gaining a seat or two off the carcass of Yamina – but still not achieving a bloc-wide ruling majority. Then again, if they weren’t cultists they’d have woken up long ago. So even Klein’s comment, that she was afraid to tell Sara that she’s a Mizrachi Jew because then Sara “wouldn’t want to be her friend” (i.e., wouldn’t be willing to accept her as the liaison in charge of keeping the gifts coming) had little immediate impact. Maybe with three months of pounding, if the geniuses can get to pounding it.

Meretz, with military clown Yair Golan the only current candidate for leadership, is teetering on the very bring of extinction. Although it squeezes into Knesset in most polls, it does it so narrowly, that the two polls in which it doesn’t make are enough to pull it below the threshold on average. So the gevald chorus is now keening for former chairwoman Zehava Galon, who was unseated precisely for lack of the star power and charisma needed to lift the party out of perpetual fear for its electoral life. Since leaving Knesset she has rediscovered a clear lefty fire in her voice (and popularity as a witty tweeter) that was less evident in the compromise-filled life of an actual legislator, and the feeling is she could do a better job in rallying the party faithful than the dude in uniform. Chicks may dig the uniform, but less so in our camp.

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— GangstaYid🎗️ (@BaalShemDov) July 18, 2022

Nearing the end, as Haaretz reporter @Ran_Shimoni points out, virtually never in Israeli political history has a pre-election merger of parties exceeded its initial post-merger polling, so the challenge facing the hybrid Blue Hope/New-and-White¹ list is to maintain 14, and even that seems to be a challenge, as their standard-bearer Benny Gantz made no impression whatsoever during Biden’s visit, save being caught on camera trying to open a water bottle with his teeth.

Getting there, it is worth noting that the only difference between Blue and White and New Hope, in terms of the kind of electorate they appeal to and the policies they support, is that one is led by a veteran politician who knows the ins and outs of the civilian world, and the other by an unimpressive military man who until 2 years ago had zero experience on the civilian side, and whose most notable political achievement up to this week was to betray his voters, join Netanyahu after rd. 3 of the elex, and get stabbed in the back by the same Netanyahu under a year later. His second most notable achievement was to fight tooth and nail for preposterous pension benefits for retired IDF officers. That was his main issue in the “Change Government.”

There was good news for him this week though, as alluded above – the AG has ruled that despite it being election time, Defense Minister Benny Gantz can proceed with the process, already begun prior to elections being called, of appointing the IDF’s next Chief of Staff. Likud’s back-benchers were all up in arms on the topic, warning that if the AG rules as she eventually she did, they’ll fire her first thing when they get back in power. (Israel’s AG is a supposedly non-partisan actor, not subject to automatic and acceptable replacement upon new administration.) So she did so rule, and Gantz gets to influence the only aspect of Israeli society he actually cares about.

In sort of good news for him, the two schmucks who wouldn’t let him form a coalition in Rd. 3, Yoaz Hendel and Zvi Hauser – aka the Frick and Frack, or Itchy and Scratchy of Israeli politics – are once again shopping for an electoral home, and for lack of better options to take their sabotaging, overinflating egos on board, they’re joining up with Ayelet Shaked on the good ship Titanic… I mean Yamina.

Finally, in light of all the actual, convicted and indicted criminals running in the Likud primaries _{(it’s FAR from just Bibi. The fish may stink from the head but mofo been reeking for a while. Shit’s metastasized throughout),} @ShragaTichover over on twitter broke a “scoop” when he “reported” that instead of a retired judge to oversee their primaries, as is customary, Likud are considering the appointment of a parole officer… Well played, my man, well played. And on that note, until the next episode – thank you for flying the Gangsta skies.

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¹ _{Yeah, I did that on purpose. Good catch. There really is very little to tell these parties apart.}