Leaked Police Interrogation Footage of Netanyahu, and How He Cowers Behind War to Keep Power

Alex Kimney, thank you very much for doing this.

So for all the years that Benjamin Netanyahu has been in the American media, I think there's

very little sense in the U.S. about his domestic troubles in Israel.

We keep hearing he's been charged and the President of the United States keeps saying he needs

to be pardoned.

You've made this documentary that explains what is at the core of this controversy?

What are the charges?

What is he accused of doing?

Did he do it?

So I'm going to stand back and just let you, if you would, outline what Benjamin Netanyahu

has been accused of doing.

Well, roughly speaking, you'd say it was bribery or you'd say it was corruption.

And I can detail the charges.

This is a film that I produced and was directed by Alexis Bloom.

And back in 2023, I got a strange message on signal from somebody who said that they

had all of the police interrogation videos from the Benjamin Netanyahu investigation.

And they had been investigating Netanyahu since 2016 for charges of corruption.

That is to say, trading on his position as prime minister to get money in all sorts

of favors, jewelry for his wife, very expensive Cuban cigars, hundreds of millions of dollars

in forgiveness of certain loans in order to be able to get favorable coverage on a news

website called Walla.

So it was a pretty interesting case.

And it went from the very small meaning, you know, very expensive Cuban cigars from a

rather famous movie producer named Arnon Milchand to something very big, which is effectively

a $250 million financial arrangement in exchange for good coverage for Netanyahu.

So it was a pretty big deal.

So you got the tapes, let me just ask, what do they come from?

I can't say where they came from.

I can't say anything about the source, but what I can say is we got over a thousand

hours of tapes.

And these were interviews with Netanyahu himself by the police, also Netanyahu's wife,

Sara, his son, Yaya, also with a number of key people close to Netanyahu, for example,

their Hefetz, his former head of communications.

Sheldon Adelson, who we know in this country as a billionaire, now deceased, his wife Miriam

Adelson, Arnon Milchand, a famous Israeli businessman, arms dealer, who also became a very

famous motion picture producer.

So it was a kind of an extraordinary array of evidence.

And while some of this evidence had been published in Israel in written form, nobody had

seen the tapes.

The tapes are very revealing, particularly for Netanyahu, because Netanyahu tries to cultivate

this image of the grand vizier, the great statesman of Israel.

Here you see a rather petty corrupt man, desperately lying to save his skin, and his wife,

who is a deeply entitled woman, trying to claim that somewhat if we got stuff, we deserve

it, because we're doing so much for the nation and for the world.

And his son Yair, who is also extremely entitled screaming at the police yelling, you're

like the Stassi.

So it was an illuminating look at the actual character behind the facade, sort of like

that moment in the Wizard of Oz, where, you know, Toto pulls back the curtain, and

the Wizard says, please, pay no attention, but it was really revealing.

If you can, and I think people watching this will watch the film, but I'm interested

in your take, having watched a thousand hours of this, what is it?

Can you go more deeply into what do you think it reveals about the prime minister and

his character?

Well, I think it reveals, I think, a kind of deep-seated corruption, a willingness to

do almost anything to save his skin.

I think that he became possessed after the election in 2015 of a sense of enormous arrogance

that he was now the man, because he came back from what seemed to be a defeat to an

enormous victory.

And now he had this sense of entitlement.

Interestingly, then he began to, you know, cash in on that entitlement, and he was caught.

But what happened then was that rather, you know, as he heard the sound of the possibility

of the jail door slamming shut on him, he began to start to do things that really took

Israel in a very dark direction.

The first thing he tried to do was to essentially fix the Department of Justice.

He tried to engage in a series of, this is before October 7th, he tried to engage in a series

of reforms of the judicial system, which would weaken the power of the judiciary in Israel.

Most likely, because that would undermine the case against him.

That's the most direct likely outcome.

But the other thing was that by this time he had formed a government with an extremely

right-wing coalition with a guy named Ben Gavir, who is a head of national security and

a guy named Smotrik, who is a head of the finance.

They are extremely right-wing, extremely anti-Palestinian, and their designs were to expand

illegal settlements in the West Bank.

And in some cases, well, it was already a dire situation for Palestinians on the West

Bank.

Nevertheless, there would be judicial orders, which would sometimes get in the way of that.

That was another aspect of this.

When Netanyahu tried to fix the judiciary, the country rose up.

And it was in a huge uproar over these changes, which were fundamentally undermining Israel's

democracy.

Not too long after, of course, there was the terrible attack by Hamas on October 7th,

which shocked Israel.

What people began to learn was that for years, Netanyahu, again, I think, as part of the

way he sees the world and as part of a more generalized sense of corruption, had been

trying to modulate the relationship with Hamas, and indeed had been allowing millions and

millions of dollars to flow to Hamas from Qatar, sometimes in bags of cash traveling through

Israel.

What he was doing that was to undermine the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank in

order to be able to allow for his right wing coalition to get more and more territory

by a settlement.

So all sorts of strange corrupt deals were happening.

But then I think that post 10-7, which was a terrible moment, I don't want to minimize

it in any way, it was a horrific attack, and we show some of that attack in the film.

But he then launched an attack on Gaza, which was so beyond any sense of proportionality.

Now we have at least over 75,000 people dead.

Of course, now we have an Iran war, an 11-on war, and so forth and so on.

But one of the goals I'm convinced, and not me, but all of the witnesses who are very

reputable members of the Security Establishment in Israel in the film, indicate that part

of the enduring ferocity, savagery of the war, was due to becoming a wartime president

who could then not be prosecuted or successfully prosecuted for the crimes he had committed.

The trial, not only the investigation, but now the trial is still ongoing.

This is 10 years after the investigation started.

So long as he's the commander in chief and he's waging war, how dare you attack the president?

So in a way, this kind of venal personal corruption that starts with cigars and pink champagne

for which they had code names, and then evolves into corrupt deals relating to the media

becomes a mechanism by which slowly but surely the corruption got greater and greater and

tell it became a moral corruption in which the world is now engulfed.

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You're first.

There were people in Israel in public right after October 7th, which Claire was committed

by Hamas and was clearly terrible.

I agree with that.

I want to be clear.

But there were a bunch of people, including people I knew who said, wait a second.

This couldn't have happened if the government of Israel had really tried to prevent it.

There's something very strange about the ability of Hamas fighters on motorbikes and gliders

and on foot coming across the most heavily guarded border in the world and the delay in

the response of the IDF to this, like, what is this?

It's almost forbidden to say that, as you know, in the United States.

But tell me what people you spoke to in Israel now believe about that attack.

I should point out that when you say I spoke to, I mean, the person who directed the film

was Alexis Blum.

I got the footage.

Alexis, of course, I'm asking you to speak for the film.

Sure, sure, sure.

No problem.

In any event, I think there were a lot of people who felt that a proper investigation into

what Netanyahu knew about the possible impending attack by Hamas should be commenced.

However, that got rolled under their carpet because of the fact that he's now in a war

with Hamas.

Hamas doesn't really have an air force, so you can't properly call it a war.

But I think there was a lot of talk about how much and what advanced warning Netanyahu

may have had about the October 7 attacks.

I've never seen, you know, prima facie evidence of that fact, but there's certainly a lot

of talk about it in Israel.

Okay.

So it's not just crazy people on the internet who think it's possible or likely that Benjamin

Netanyahu knew this was coming, had some sense it was coming, didn't do his best to prevent

the damage within Israel because he was in this politically tough spot and the ensuing

war would take the attention off him and allow him a pass on the charges.

Is that a fair estimation?

Yeah.

I personally think it may be a bit too cynical to think that he literally engendered

an attack in order to counter attack.

But I do think that he had deluded himself in part because he thought of the world as

a series of deals.

He had deluded himself into the idea that he had manipulated Hamas and all the money that

was flowing to Hamas, you know, wasn't going to go to weapons and preparing an attack.

I mean, he kept saying, what's the phrase?

It's in the film that he could control the height of the flames by the introduction of

the money.

Oh, and he also called father when he saw the police.

He says, keep your friends close and your enemies closer as if he was the dawn and sort

of able to manipulate events, but he clearly was not able to.

That seems like a smart interpretation to him.

Of course, I don't know, but that sounds plausible, entirely plausible.

So then October 7th happens.

I think most Israelis are genuinely shocked that it happened and they're horrified and

a lot of the world is genuinely shocked and horrified, including me.

But then this war begins in Gaza, or this leveling of Gaza, this mass murder in Gaza,

and then it expands to a lot of the region to Lavant and now into Iran.

Is it too cynical to think that one of the motives there from the Prime Minister is to

just keep moving forward because if he stops, he gets arrested.

Well, it may be a little bit too cynical, I mean, David Netanyahu's wanted to attack

Iran for years.

In fact, they did another film about that subject called Zero Days.

But I do think that once the momentum of war began, and I would say also that to some

extent, the momentum of war began to have a certain popular impact among the populists

in Israel, too, that now there was an opportunity to go after more enemies.

And it had the byproduct, of course, as long as there's war, as long as there's permanent

war, Netanyahu will never be held to account.

So once again, I think it may be a bit too cynical to say he attacked Iran so he wouldn't

go to jail, but I think it had been a long-standing desire for Netanyahu to want to really go

after Iran.

And now, both once he'd started the war in Gaza, but also I think with the Trump administration

coming to power in 2024, suddenly he had an opportunity.

Yeah, that sounds right to me.

So how is he regarded the Prime Minister in Israel?

It's hard to know if you're not there.

What's your view?

I agree.

I think it's fair to say that there is a robust group of people who are vehemently anti- Netanyahu

and believe he's destroying Israel and destroying democracy in Israel.

And indeed, making the country a pariah worldwide, I would agree with that point of view.

However, I would also say that war has a peculiar effect on people and can engender a sense

of nationalism, which I believe is rising, not only a sense of nationalism, but that nationalism

undergirded by the undertow of victimhood.

So Netanyahu is very much using that, and I think it would be a mistake to think that

he's unpopular.

Kind of very soon when elections happen, but I think that as long as you're waging

war, people tend to rally around the commander in chief, which I think is both a cynical

ploy by Netanyahu and also a longstanding goal of his to be able to wage war across

the Levant and expand Israel's power and influence.

Did you get a sense of his religious views?

I think if Netanyahu is, well, honestly, he's pretty American and Western and secular,

but in his, I mean, the first statement he gave after Warner Renn began, he began with

today's Torah portion, and he's been saying things like that a lot.

Do you have an opinion on what he thinks what his spiritual views are?

It's hard for me to say.

I mean, I think that, to some extent, I see him more as a politician.

Now I don't have access to what his real views are, but when you hear politicians quoting

scripture in effect, it tends to be for the reason that they're trying to undergird

their policies with the force of God.

It's an old script, and I think Netanyahu knows very well that it's an effective one.

That would be my gut.

I really don't know or have any insight into what he believes when he's alone in a room,

what his relationship is with God.

Yeah.

Well, we can't know, but it does seem like the country is changing fast.

That's my perception as a visitor.

It's not a good thing, and we can also see that this hard right wing faction has wreaked

havoc on the West Bank, and settlements are expanding a pace in a really reprehensible

way.

There's lots of, it's sort of out of the public eye, but that, I think, was one of the

goals from the beginning, with his reckoning with Hamas and all of this stuff.

But also because Netanyahu in order to stay in power, another corrupt deal, he makes

a deal with the hard right, and then goes very hard right.

It's not like he was ever a peacenick, but now he goes very, very, very hard right at

the great expense of the lives and livelihoods of many Palestinians.

Yeah.

I don't know if it's right or not.

I'm on the right, and I hate this.

I hate violence.

And there were reports this morning of, in the Israeli press, of mass rapes of Palestinians

by settlers in the West Bank, so like, I think that's just a degree of violence by settlers

on Palestinians in the West Bank is repatience.

I mean, it's, and it goes on day after day after day after day.

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So since you're the producer of this film, do you mind if I ask you about your experience?

So you come into possession of a thousand hours of tape, which is not public.

You're not saying, understandably, exactly how you got it, but it's real.

I mean, probably a lot of people don't want you to make that into a documentary and

error.

So what was your experience of that?

That's where to say.

And indeed, when we tried to produce the film in secret, I had some able helpers.

I mean, not only was Alexis Bloom, an extraordinary talented woman directing it, but in Israel,

we were aided by a guy named Revive Drucker, who was a noted journalist in Israel, helped

us contextualize some of this stuff.

But we had a sense that we had to keep it secret while we were making it.

And then we sort of launched an event at the Toronto Film Festival in 2024.

It was a work in progress because we felt at that moment, this kind of thing needed to

be seen.

Now Netanyahu himself went to court in Israel to try to stop the premiere of the film at

Toronto.

He was utterly unsuccessful.

But I should note also that the American media played a kind of unseemly role in the

sense that we were, we went to NBC first and we're going to do a rather big piece in advance

of the premiere in Toronto.

And then we were told of the last minute that, oh, NBC has decided that we're not going

to do the story because it would probably upset Netanyahu and that would limit our access

to the prime minister.

They said that?

Yes.

They said that to me.

That's correct.

What?

Not what I would regard as a deeply courageous move by a journalistic organization.

Yeah.

I mean, I think journalistic is probably too strong, but wow, I'm just, I mean, I've worked

at that company.

I'm just surprised that they were as blunt as they were to you.

What did you say?

I was just shocked.

I mean, because I was ready to, I was ready to do an interview.

I believe it was Andrea Mitchell, you know, I was shocked.

And you know, part of the reckoning was, it was both both Craven and Bad Journalistically,

but also sort of corrupt in the sense that they suggested that they might have gone with

it if they themselves had discovered the police interrogation videos.

But they weren't going to risk their capital when Netanyahu for something that they themselves

didn't discover.

The idea of the public good or the public reckoning didn't, didn't seem to be part of the equation.

It was a very disappointing moment.

Probably not that surprising.

I mean, in general, the coverage of what happens there is, well, non-existent or not consistent

with reality in the United States.

But did you pause it all before embarking on this?

Once you got the tapes, do you think maybe it's not a good idea long term for me to get involved

in something like this?

No.

I felt it was really important because those tapes, once I was able to verify them and

to understand them better, I felt they shed a really important light on a vital figure

in world politics.

Netanyahu.

Yes.

And so it seemed to me that that's my job.

When I find out important information about public figures that shed light on wars and

how we reckon with the world that it's my job to get that story out.

So I actually didn't pause.

But it took a while to figure out, because I'm not a network, you know, I'm an independent

filmmaker, and it took a while to figure out how to raise the money, how to, and also

to do it in secret so that nobody would subpoena the tapes or, you know, prevent me from

getting to the end.

So, you know, Alexis and I had to proceed, you know, for some time in secret.

But you know, I felt it was really important material and really important to get it out.

Good for you.

How hard was it to raise the money?

It was hard, but not as it turns out impossible.

And there were a number of people who also, once they were able to see a little bit of

what we had, came forward and helped.

So yeah, we were able to do it.

It was, but it was, it was, it was, it was mining a different source.

It wasn't the traditional way where you go to your bureau chief and you say, please give

me the resources of the corporation and let's go get this story.

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Do you expect any consequences going forward?

I mean, presumably you hope to make other films, will this make it harder?

I don't know.

I think that we live in a moment where people all over the world, including in this country,

are making it difficult for independent voices to be heard.

So yeah, I reckon with that, but I feel like even though, and I'm glad you, you know,

TCN is showing BB files on its, on its network and it has had, you know, pretty good international

distribution, the distribution here has been somewhat handicapped, but can you tell us

about that?

I mean, it seems like even if I disagreed with your views, which I, I don't know that

I do, I don't think I do, but I would just stop at you have relevant information.

That's real about one of the key players in global politics.

So like that alone justifies this in my opinion.

And so the idea that you would have distribution problems in the United States is a little scary

and I'd love to know more about what those problems are.

I think one of the problems is that the market in general is controversy, a verse, you

know, you have a number of streamers who don't want to upset their, their viewers.

You have news organizations, which in this case, as I, as I've documented, you know, also

didn't want to be on, on the wrong side of an issue that might upset people.

I mean, it seems to me that the job, you know, because I, because I do think that four

years ago, roughly speaking, you know, if I had gone out into the marketplace with the

BB files, there would have been a bidding war.

But now it's kind of just the opposite.

It's like, we don't want to do anything that might upset people because then they won't

buy sneakers or they won't buy iPads, you know, so that's part of it.

And I, and I think part of it is that controversy has become problematic and also powerful political

figures are exerting influence on broadcasting outlets to, to the line.

And sometimes if you're not, you know, you don't have a regular show, you don't get a hearing.

So it's a problem.

It's a really big problem.

I think the, you know, while I'm, I'm critical of the mainstream press, particularly in this,

in this instance, you know, I believe strongly in the idea of a free press and, and, and

I'm deeply upset about the way, not only Netanyahu did it in Israel, but the way the Trump

administration is trying to suppress a free press in his country.

So it's a dark time for this.

How long have you been doing this kind of thing?

Well, that's a good question.

Um, you know, I guess I've been doing it.

I've been an independent, a freelance since, um, geez, since the 1980s.

So somehow, some way I've been, you know, managing to scrape by, um, I've, and I've never

really worked for an organization, except for the small company that is Chigsaw Productions,

which is my company.

Have you ever seen an environment this difficult for someone who wants to present news

were the inherently newsworthy material like the tapes in this documentary?

Not really.

The, the, there was another period in the late 90s, um, in this country.

Uh, I remember trying to do a film about, it was critical of Henry Kissinger.

And, uh, I had a, I had an easy, the BBC was, was actually heroic in that instance,

but I could find no finders here and is only by going to, um, I think we played

at the film forum for something like three months, that finally, it allowed

because it was that entertainment.

It allowed a broadcaster to show it.

It was difficult then, but it's much more fraught now.

I think it's very, very, very hard to get independent voices, um, hurt.

It's, um, it's, um, it's really unprecedented in my experience at this moment.

Yeah.

Well, thank you.

That's certainly my feeling, but I don't have the, the 40 year perspective that you do.

So, um, but I admire your dedication to a free press.

Your bravery in doing this and your willingness to explain it, uh, to us into

air it, uh, on T-San.

So thank you very much, Alex Gibney.

Thank you, Tucker.