Police interrogators are reading Benjamin Netanyahu his rights, in the opening frames of new documentary The Bibi Files. His oblong, jowled face is well known — Netanyahu has been Israel’s prime minister for a total of 17 years — but we are accustomed to seeing him in charge of events, behind a lectern haranguing his country and the world beyond. We have never seen him like this.
Late last year, videos of police questioning of Netanyahu, his family, his rich backers and his disillusioned aides were leaked to Alex Gibney, an Oscar-winning American documentary maker and one of the producers of The Bibi Files. The tapes were recorded between 2016 and 2018 and appear for the first time in The Bibi Files.
From the outset, we see Netanyahu literally backed into a corner, behind his desk, fending off a barrage of questions about lavish gifts the police claim he received in return for favours, and about political favours that they claim were bestowed in return for flattering news coverage.
The leaked tapes themselves are compelling, but the director, Alexis Bloom, seeks to go further. The Bibi Files appears to draw a bright, bold, causal line between Netanyahu’s 2019 corruption indictment and the current state of the region. Netanyahu has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, alleging he is the victim of a politically motivated witch-hunt, and he formally pleaded not guilty in a trial that has now continued, off and on, since 2020. However, the film argues that the trial is part of the reason a desperate Netanyahu took his country and the surrounding region into the abyss.
Raviv Drucker, an Israeli television journalist and co–producer of The Bibi Files, has devoted much of his career to investigating allegations of corruption surrounding Netanyahu and his family. He says he always operated on the assumption that no-one should be above the law, but now swears that, if he had known where Netanyahu would lead the country, he would rather the politician was never indicted.
"If you had taken me through some kind of time tunnel and shown me where we are in 2024, I would have told you: ‘Just don’t start with these cases’. I would throw all of them in the garbage, even though some of them started with my investigations," Drucker says. "This is the honest truth, because none of us would have imagined what Netanyahu would do."
The prime minister knows full well his police interrogation sessions are being filmed and may one day become public, but The Bibi Files is surely an outcome beyond his worst imagining.
Bloom, the director and co-producer, is a South African who has previously exposed some powerful and venal men. Her 2018 film Divide and Conquer looks at the rise and fall of the former Fox News boss and Trump-booster Roger Ailes.
Drucker, Netanyahu’s nemesis for many years, plays the role of chorus in The Bibi Files, chronicling the prime minister’s slide towards war and extremism.
Netanyahu tried to shrug off Drucker, as he has largely ignored Israeli media as a whole in recent years, but he could not dodge the police when they asked the same questions.
We do not just see Netanyahu being quizzed, we also watch Israel’s super-rich squirm in the face of questions about the lavish gifts police claim they presented to the prime minister and his wife, Sara. In the film, giving various accounts from former aides, it appears that the couple were not shy about soliciting such gifts — though the Netanyahus deny demanding presents from rich friends.
In return, it is alleged that favours were distributed, such as a US visa procured for a tycoon thanks to Netanyahu’s direct intervention with the then secretary of state, John Kerry. In another case, it is claimed that a government document was drafted and signed for a mogul, giving him access to hundreds of millions of dollars in short-term funds which saved him from bankruptcy.
Netanyahu slaloms through the inquisition, dismissing some matters as trivial and private — simply gifts from close friends — his eyebrow raised at the impertinence of the questioner. Much of the time he claims simply not to remember.
The couple’s son, Yair, who we learn in The Bibi Files may be groomed as a successor, is unbridled in his contempt for his interrogators, comparing them to the Gestapo. The inflammatory rhetoric he has spread online embodies the end-point of his father’s political journey from centre-right deal maker to the head of the most extreme government in Israeli history. It includes previously fringe figures such as Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has a past conviction for inciting racial hatred, and Bezalel Smotrich, a former political activist who was arrested in 2005 in possession of 700 litres of petrol allegedly intended for use in blowing up a motorway running through Tel Aviv.
Drucker argues that Netanyahu’s sharp turn to the right has its origins in his corruption indictment. When the indictment narrowed the field of Israeli parties willing to form a coalition government with him he turned in 2022 to the only alternative that would keep him in power.
"This is the only reason that he established the most far-right coalition that was ever established in the history of Israel," Drucker said. "Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are two lunatics from the far right."
He argues Netanyahu’s determination to avoid being tried led him to try to dilute the power of Israel’s supreme court. That attempt split the country and brought the biggest protests in Israeli history on to the streets last year.
Following the far-right agenda of his coalition partners, meanwhile, entailed focusing the military’s effort in the West Bank in support of Israeli settlers, moving units and weaponry away from the south, where Hamas struck in October last year. "They recognised a great opportunity and they took advantage of it," Drucker says.
Once the Gaza war started, Netanyahu had every reason to keep it going, even after almost every Hamas leader had been killed.
His hard-right partners could tolerate a truce in Lebanon but would walk out of the coalition if there is a hostage deal with Hamas involving a prisoner exchange and a ceasefire. That would trigger new elections — which opinion polls suggest Netanyahu would lose.
"That would be a disaster for him," Drucker said. "He will do everything he needs to keep on going with the war."
But after all his years investigating Netanyahu, Drucker finds that he cares much less about the prime minister’s ultimate fate than he used to. "Two years ago, it was the whole world for us: the rule of law, everybody being equal, even the prime minister," he says. "But now we are stuck in such a terrible mess in Israel. Our whole foundation is rocking every day beneath our feet. Now all we want is to live without the sirens."
The film
The Bibi Files is available to stream on DocPlay from next Friday. — Guardian News & Media
