Netanyahu’s Trial Has Gone International. That’s a Problem

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week escalated his legal and political battle by releasing an English-language video aimed squarely at American audiences, especially American Jews and U.S. political leaders. It is an extraordinary move: a sitting prime minister appealing to foreign publics to reshape perceptions of his corruption trial in Jerusalem.

And now, he has publicly declared that he will not retire from political life even in exchange for a pardon.

Speaking directly into the camera, Netanyahu presents a narrative familiar in American populist politics: that the charges against him are manufactured by a biased system determined to drive him from office. He portrays investigators as motivated by personal animus and warns that his prosecution threatens Israel’s stability. By adopting a vocabulary and framing tailored to an American audience, he is seeking external validation for a legal case he cannot win in court.

That alone is troubling. But paired with President Donald Trump’s interventions over the past two months, it becomes dangerous.

Trump has repeatedly pressured Israel to halt Netanyahu’s trial, a line that responsible leaders simply do not cross. The escalation began in mid-October, when Trump used a speech in the Knesset to denounce the charges against Netanyahu as “a disgrace to a great leader.” That was already inappropriate for a U.S. president addressing a foreign legislature.

Then, in mid-November, he went further: Trump sent Israeli President Isaac Herzog a formal letter urging him to grant Netanyahu a full, pre-verdict pardon, an extraordinary request virtually unheard of between democratic allies. He cast the prosecution as a “political attack.” He suggested Israel should simply “move past” the trial, as though criminal indictments against a sitting prime minister were an inconvenience rather than a test of the rule of law.

Herzog, to his credit, pushed back: “I respect Trump’s friendship and his opinion … but Israel is a sovereign state.”

This is not diplomacy. It is interference. Allies debate policy, not indictments. They respect each other’s courts. When an American president tries to stop an ongoing criminal trial in Israel, he undercuts a pillar of the U.S.–Israel relationship: a shared commitment to judicial independence.

Months ago, Trump repeated talking points from Netanyahu’s private briefings, including the false claim that most remaining hostages in Gaza were already dead. Israeli intelligence contradicted this, and the release of twenty live hostages later proved it untrue. Yet the episode highlighted how thoroughly Trump absorbed Netanyahu’s political narrative and applied it to a legal case he did not fully understand, a dynamic that still shapes how the trial is perceived today.

Netanyahu’s appeals, combined with Trump’s interventions, which enlist American Jews in undermining both Israel’s legal process and sovereignty, carry broader risks. At a time of rising anti-Semitism in the United States, such efforts can provide fresh ammunition to extremists who portray Jews as manipulating the American government.

Trump’s interventions are not without precedent: last July, he attempted to influence Brazil’s legal proceedings against former President Bolsonaro, imposing tariffs and personal sanctions on the presiding judge. His involvement in Netanyahu’s case is another example of pressing foreign countries to ignore their own laws in favor of authoritarian leaders, now with potential consequences for Jewish communities abroad.

The facts of Netanyahu’s case are well known. What requires urgent attention now is the internationalization of his defense. Netanyahu’s video, Trump’s lobbying, and a chorus of U.S. commentators framing the trial as political persecution amount to an effort to shift legitimacy away from Israel’s constitutional system toward external supporters. In the process, diaspora Jews are being drafted, unfairly, into a political campaign to discredit Israel’s judiciary.

That is a profoundly dangerous development. It forces American Jews into a false choice between “supporting Israel” and supporting the independence of Israel’s courts. Defending Israel has never required defending any particular politician, let alone undermining the institutions that safeguard the country’s democratic character.

Meanwhile, the stakes inside Israel could not be higher. Netanyahu has formally requested a pre-verdict pardon from President Herzog. Such a pardon would be unprecedented: Israeli presidents have historically granted clemency only after conviction, typically when the individual has expressed remorse or stepped back from public life. Netanyahu meets none of these criteria. He remains in office, denies all wrongdoing, and seeks to avoid an ongoing trial.

Granting a pardon now, especially under foreign pressure, would set a disastrous precedent, suggesting that powerful politicians with influential allies abroad can circumvent the legal process entirely. It would deepen internal divisions and erode the institutions that have preserved Israel’s democratic resilience.

If the U.S.–Israel relationship is anchored in shared democratic values, then both countries must uphold the principle that no leader is above the law. Netanyahu’s attempt to shift his trial into the American political arena, and Trump’s extraordinary willingness to act as his political enforcer, threaten that foundation. When a U.S. president pressures a foreign ally to halt a criminal proceeding, he is not defending democracy; he is undermining it. Whatever Americans may think of Trump, they did not elect a president to serve as a defense attorney for his embattled foreign allies.

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