When Clemency Becomes a Security Risk
By M.Brosh Author of Cassandra's Shadow
Foreign interference, judicial pressure, and the price of eroding Israel’s sovereignty
When a foreign leader seeks to intervene in an ongoing criminal trial of a sitting prime minister, the issue is no longer personal or political. It becomes a direct challenge to national sovereignty, the rule of law, and democratic integrity.
That is precisely the danger posed by recent attempts by U.S. President Donald Trump to frame and implicitly influence the criminal proceedings against Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump’s public portrayal of the case as a trivial matter of “cigars and champagne” is not only misleading; it risks obscuring the far more serious implications for Israel’s democracy and security.
The broader context matters. Trump has repeatedly shown a willingness to sell advanced military technology, including F-35 fighter jets, with minimal strategic restraint. Against this backdrop, suggestions of pressure on Israel’s president to grant clemency to Netanyahu while simultaneously easing Israeli objections to arms sales to regional actors such as the UAE, Qatar, Turkey, or Saudi Arabia raise troubling questions. Even the perception of a quid pro quo undermines public trust and blurs the line between national security policy and personal political survival.
At the same time, Netanyahu continues to manage foreign relations while standing trial, frequently seeking postponements of testimony and meeting foreign officials sometimes from within the courthouse itself. This is not a routine democratic scenario. A head of government acting as a criminal defendant while shaping foreign and security policy creates an inherent conflict of interest that should alarm any democracy.
Trump’s insistence that the case concerns only gifts and champagne reflects either a profound ignorance of the facts or a deliberate attempt to trivialize them. Netanyahu is charged with bribery, fraud, and breach of trust, serious offenses in any democratic system. Efforts to weaken Israel’s judiciary or undermine the Supreme Court do not erase these charges, nor do they place the prime minister above the law. No American president, current or former, has the authority to intervene in Israel’s internal legal processes.
And the criminal case is only part of the picture.
Netanyahu has also categorically refused to establish a state commission of inquiry into the catastrophic failure of 7 October 2023. While he was serving as prime minister, Israel experienced a coordinated attack that resulted in the massacre of Israeli civilians and soldiers. For many Israelis, this event is regarded as the gravest national disaster since the Holocaust. Despite the scale of the failure and the loss of life, Netanyahu has resisted any independent, state-mandated investigation into the political, military, and intelligence decisions that preceded the attack, a refusal that raises profound questions about accountability at the highest level of government.
For years, Netanyahu has opposed the establishment of a state commission of inquiry to examine another of the most consequential policies in Israel’s recent history: the transfer of Qatari funds into Gaza. This policy was not forced upon him. He promoted it, approved it, and defended it publicly, despite repeated warnings from security professionals. Those funds, transferred with Israeli approval, contributed to Hamas’s financial stability and military buildup. The devastating consequences of that strategy are now painfully clear.
Then there is Case 3000, the submarine affair. An official inquiry concluded that decisions taken by the prime minister caused harm to Israel’s national security. Netanyahu approved Germany’s sale of advanced submarines to Egypt, a dramatic strategic decision made against the recommendations of Israel’s defense establishment, without transparency and without a convincing public explanation. In any other democracy, such a decision would demand immediate accountability.
Whenever the Netanyahu family is involved in major strategic decisions, a fundamental question arises: in exchange for what? This is not an abstract concern. Egypt has a documented history of bribing a senior Israeli political figure in connection with the natural gas agreement a precedent that underscores why suspicions surrounding the submarine affair cannot be casually dismissed.
Reducing this record to a caricature about luxury gifts is not merely inaccurate; it is reckless. What emerges instead is a consistent pattern: the erosion of democratic institutions, pressure on judicial independence, and security decisions taken under opaque circumstances with potentially devastating consequences.
Israel’s president has no authority to grant clemency to a defendant while legal proceedings are ongoing. More importantly, no foreign leader has the right to demand it. This is an internal matter of Israeli democracy, and its resolution must occur in court, not through diplomatic pressure, arms deals, or political bargaining.
The stakes extend far beyond Israel. When powerful allies normalize interference in domestic legal systems, they weaken democratic norms everywhere. The lesson should be clear: security alliances must never become tools for shielding leaders from accountability. Clemency, when weaponized, ceases to be mercy and becomes a threat.