A Pardon for Defendant Benjamin Netanyahu Will Not Save President Isaac Herzog From Himself

Prof. Amnon Cavari
Head of the Institute for Liberty and Responsibility, Reichman University

In Israel, formative events—whether security-related, political, or institutional—occur frequently. These moments allow public figures to leave their mark and transform a crisis into an opportunity. Yet not everyone in a position of influence can recognize such a moment, seize it, or withstand its pressures. Those who do can change reality.

President Isaac Herzog was given such a rare opportunity in 2023 to defend the foundations of democracy when they came under direct attack by the government itself in its attempt to advance the so-called “judicial reform.” This could have been Herzog’s finest hour, as the position is meant to represent the people, the state, and democratic norms. But the moment was missed. Had he understood the essence of his position, he could have stood before the public clearly and decisively—not as a partisan, not as a mediator between adversaries, but as a guardian of the principles of democracy: separation of powers, an independent judiciary, the rule of law, and freedom of expression.

Instead, he chose to serve as a “mediator” between sides that are not morally symmetrical, thereby legitimizing the narrative that a struggle over the nature of democracy is just another political dispute.

After the national catastrophe of October 7, the president had another opportunity to assume the moral leadership that the government refused to take and save Israel from the consequences of October 8. He should have clearly called for a state commission of inquiry, stood firmly behind universal moral principles during wartime, condemned harm to innocents, and served as a moral compass when political leadership collapsed. He should have demanded an immediate investigation into the government's failures and insisted on accountability as it moves forward.

This opportunity, too, he missed. As a result, he enabled the government to weaken state institutions to shield itself from scrutiny. His eventual support for a commission of inquiry is weak, belated, and ineffective. The commission will be established despite the president, not because of him. The public needed moral leadership; President Herzog could have been that figure, but was not.

In 2028, President Herzog will end his term as someone who could have been a moral anchor and a democratic safeguard—but was not. As of this writing, Isaac Herzog holds the lowest levels of public trust of any Israeli president since Ezer Weizman (except for Katsav, a convicted rapist, in the final stage of his presidency). According to surveys by the Institute for Liberty and Responsibility, at the height of the protests against the judicial overhaul, only half the public trusted him. That trust steadily declined to 36 percent by November of this year, with a higher support among opposition voters and a lower support among coalition voters. At a moment when the nation yearns for a leader who rises above division—a moral compass absent from contemporary Israeli public life—we have instead a president who navigates “between the raindrops,” courting approval from different factions, lacking the trust of a national majority, and generating public divisions.

Granting a pardon to the defendant Benjamin Netanyahu—if the president chooses to promote it under the guise of “unity” and “fortifying society”—will not transform him into the president he never was and never will be. This is not his opportunity to “unite Israelis.” The public may be weary of Netanyahu’s trial (a circus by all accounts), but a hasty shortcut does not close the wound; it deepens it. A trial that has preoccupied the country since 2020 cannot end with absolution for the defendant—especially not for a defendant whose actions, decisions, and leadership of the political system helped bring Israel into its current political, institutional, security, and moral crises. Certainly not without a clear admission of guilt and a complete, permanent departure from public life. The president has the authority only to pardon offenders—not to dissolve a trial. Netanyahu’s request contains none of this.

President Herzog is unlikely to issue a quick decision on Netanyahu’s request. Instead, he may initiate discussions and create the appearance of mediation. He even called on the public to express its views, as if the matter were a referendum on preference rather than principle. But this is not the president's role. His role is not to mediate between “warring sides,” but to serve as a moral and ethical compass—to be a voice for the state and its values, not a broker of compromises that question the very essence of those values.

He must state clearly that ending the trial without an admission of guilt and a withdrawal from political life gravely undermines the rule of law, the integrity of the judiciary, and core democratic norms—even if the public momentarily longs for relief from the trial. The very act of entertaining the request creates a false discourse of symmetry—as if this were a legitimate debate between competing viewpoints, rather than a matter of fundamental principles that must guide action even if one side finds them inconvenient (and even if that side threatens the president and labels him a “leftist”).

President Isaac Herzog could learn from his father, President Chaim Herzog, who erred in his political involvement and his intervention in judicial processes. The elder Herzog made a mistake in 1984, when, amid a political deadlock, he facilitated talks that led to the formation of a national unity government between Labor and Likud. Though it produced a stable and—in many eyes—a successful government, it postponed the political system’s reckoning with its failures, a postponement for which Israel paid a heavy political price.

He erred a second time when he pardoned the Shin Bet agents involved in the Bus 300 affair, thereby preventing Israeli society from confronting the necessary moral questions about the limits of force and the ethics of its use—even in the face of terrorism. Had Chaim Herzog voiced an unequivocal moral stance then, it might have resonated powerfully today, in light of recent events that raise difficult questions about the boundaries of the often-careless use of state power against Arabs and minorities in Israel and in the occupied territories. In both cases, he acted out of a desire to “heal” and avoid debates that might threaten social cohesion, but in practice, he weakened patterns of responsibility, justice, and democracy.

Regarding the judicial overhaul, President Isaac Herzog has already repeated his father’s first mistake: offering a misguided mediation effort that served as a smokescreen for the political system’s failures and legitimized both sides as morally equivalent. In doing so, he allowed the architects of the overhaul to continue their attempts to erode constraints on government power.

If he now repeats the second mistake and grants a pardon to the defendant Benjamin Netanyahu, he will inflict severe damage on his personal standing and on the presidency as an institution. More importantly, by exempting a sitting political leader from standing trial—or even by seriously considering such a request—President Herzog would gravely undermine Israeli democracy, normalize political and criminal bullying, and give a green light to those in power to act as they please while intimidating state institutions. In doing so, he would align himself with the worldview prevalent in Netanyahu’s household: power over institutions.

At that point, it will not be a missed opportunity or a lapse in judgment; it will be a historic wrongdoing—one that will never be forgiven.