Nir Hefetz's testimony is the story of the entire lawsuit.
No, not only its big test, but the stage where the difficult question marks begin to hover over its heads, and doubts begin to erode the foundations on which the prosecution has placed this indictment.
If we learned anything valuable yesterday from the testimony of Nir Hefetz, it is that the evidence that was in the hands of the State Attorney's Office until yesterday is not sufficient to prove anything.
In court he said things quite the opposite of what he said in the thousands of pages of his testimony to the police, which were collected, we will recall, after he became a state witness.
There is no escape from the frightening thought that things that he completely looted during his interrogations, underwent a guided transformation during the "witness refresher" that took place a few weeks before his appearance in court.
Netanyahu's supporters outside the Jerusalem District Court / Photo: Efrat Forsher, Yoni Rickner
When asked, for example, about Netanyahu's involvement in media affairs, he testified yesterday - and for the first time - that the former prime minister dealt with media matters as he dealt with security matters. Hefetz is a man of headlines, and he probably thinks how to provide them to the media. Netanyahu's alleged wording of press releases: "He was involved in every comma." Where was this colorful obsession in the investigation?
In the case of Elovich, too, we discovered a new object yesterday. When he testified yesterday about how Shaul Elovich once said to him "how come they do not understand that I am giving them the site?", It was not possible to suspect that someone would make up such a statement. But on the other hand, how was she not mentioned at all in all the thousands of pages of his interrogations after he had already become a state witness? At the time of his first acquaintance with Iris Elowitz, he did refer to his investigations into the police - and claimed throughout that this happened in December 2016. Yesterday, however, Mrs. Elowitz's entry into the plot was "brought forward": "When did you first meet Mrs. Elowitz?" The plaintiff asked the object, to which he replied without hesitation that this had happened in mid-2015.
Is this how a lawsuit is conducted in a democracy?
And in a flag case so dramatic and important, that diverted Israel's political history?
The prosecution, apparently out of distress, has taken actions that the criminal procedure does not recognize, and which have not yet been observed in the courtrooms of our districts.
When the defense has to deal with multiple versions of a state witness, a key witness, the last of which it hears in the middle of the proceedings, the trial ceases to be a trial and begins to function as a media presentation at best, and unfair proceedings at worst.
State witness Nir Hefetz in the courtroom, Photo: Oren Ben Hakon
A decent and professional prosecution would not have promoted such an indictment, and certainly would not have sent the prosecution in such a sloppy manner to appear before the judges.
And there is a reasonable basis to believe that if it had been a different case - the court would have rolled the claim up all the stairs, with a reprimand, already at this stage.
Because in a democracy that has a functioning and credible justice system, the court also has an important role to play in restraining the prosecution when it uses its power to make up for deficiencies in evidence, in what appears to be guided evidence contradicting what was said in the investigation.
It happened faster than expected, but here we got solid confirmation of the pessimistic prediction of the late Prof. Ruth Gavison, who had a hard time seeing how the Netanyahu trial would be a justice trial.
And in truth, what resonates with the new story of the witness is the expression in which former President Miriam Naor is female: Netanyahu's trial is Mandelblit's trial, and the indictment against him is currently being written in the Jerusalem court.
