Hadas Klein, the latest witness in the corruption trial of former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, could come from central casting.
In two days of riveting testimony, Klein, 57 — poised, articulate and self-assured, with a neat frame — came across as exactly what she is: a first-rate executive assistant who has witnessed extraordinary events.
About midway through Wednesday’s recitation, her testimony took a turn that could have been taken at a mob tribunal. Klein, an aide to Arnon Milchan, the Hollywood producer and close friend of Netanyahu for the past thirty years, described his efforts to conceal the identity of the beneficiary of his purchases from Kuki, owner of a tony cigar boutique in the posh Tel Aviv suburb of Herzliya.
“Hooks — that’s his name,” wanted to know who was enjoying the Cuban cigars she bought from him worth about $27,328 a year.
“I paid everything with my personal credit card because I was trying to protect Netanyahu. I didn’t want to put it on Arnon’s credit card to protect him. Cookie never gave us a discount, but he would give us Dominican cigars as a gift… I accepted them and asked Arnon about it, and he said, “Sure, why not?” And of course, we had nothing left. We also handed over the gifts to Mr. Netanyahu.”
Kuki pressed her. “Cookie told me that only a very small club of people in the country consume this length and diameter cigar, so who is he?”
Two Monte Christo cigars cost $630, she recalled. Netanyahu liked to dip them in Cointreau before indulging in a smoke, she said.
But Klein brought more than his memories. A meticulous recorder, she provided investigators and the court with all receipts, invoices and wire transfers related to these purchases and many others. Her text messages related to the deliveries and their disposal were mercilessly projected on the screen in Judge Rivka Feldman-Freidman’s small courtroom.
Klein was the central cog in a full-fledged “well-organized mechanism” of Netanyahu’s illegal solicitation of goods from wealthy “friends” and the distribution of the resulting “gifts,” which Israeli prosecutors believe amounted to bribery.
Like Cassidy Hutchinson, Klein witnessed Netanyahu’s most intimate behavior. Like Hutchinson, she was overlooked by figures in power. And like Hutchinson, she framed her testimony as an act of patriotism.
“I am fulfilling my duties as a citizen of this country,” she told reporters in the hallway, surrounded by police bodyguards. “I was asked to testify and that’s what I’m doing. I’m doing what would make my parents proud.”
During her testimony, which also included unflattering images of Milchan, Klein worried about the possibility of losing her job.
Klein is unlike previous high-profile witnesses in Netanyahu’s trial, in which he faces charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three separate criminal cases that include, in one way or another, allegations that he abused his position for personal gain.
Both Nir Hefetz, the former head of Netanyahu’s fearsome communications shop, and Shlomo Filber, the former director-general of Israel’s communications ministry under Netanyahu, were attractive but reluctant witnesses who testified for the state only as part of plea deals the guilt they hoped would keep them from prosecution.
Hefetz testified that “in everything to do with the media, [Netanyahu] is much more than a control freak… Netanyahu spends at least as much time in the media as he does on security issues.”
Echoing Netanyahu, Filber called the process a “witch hunt” and unenthusiastically described receiving direct orders from the prime minister, who demanded that regulations be “loosened” for Shaul Elovich, a close friend who headed Israel’s largest communications conglomerate worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
“The cigars were for Netanyahu.”
Klein, by contrast, testified voluntarily, even with what appeared to be relief, and is not suspected of any crime.
She described Netanyahu’s repeated calls to her cell phone, claiming he had obtained permission for “legal counsel” for the stream of gifts he demanded be given to his wife. “You don’t understand,” the prime minister turned to his friend’s aide. “She only gets upset because the media is killing. Give her everything she wants. Everything is allowed, I checked. Don’t spill her blood like the media is doing.”
Klein described a vast staff apparatus through which Netanyahu appropriated an unlimited flow of luxury goods from Milchan, who grumbled about it, telling Klein “we have no choice. There is no other way with them,” and Packer, which she described as Netanyahu’s vulnerable group.
Milchan, she said, “enjoyed being close to power. He liked being able to say he was friends with the Prime Minister’, but was an unfortunate participant in the scheme, which involved hiding crates of Dom Perignon rosé champagne in coolers.
In March 2016, Klein recalled, when she returned home from a private trip to Cuba — her 50th birthday celebration — a furious Netanyahu complained that she had only delivered Cohiba 54 cigars for him, not his favorites, Cohiba 56es. “You can’t take them anywhere,” she said. “They just weren’t there.”
Netanyahu spoke to her in code, calling the cigars “leaves” and the champagne “rosé,” but was direct and precise about other demands, Klein said. She said Sara Netanyahu’s request for a specific gold ring and necklace from a fashionable jeweler in Tel Aviv was relayed to Klein after a conference call in which Milchan, who is expected to testify later in the trial, secured the express permission from a minister – the chairman.
Klein’s testimony was full of details and exciting pearls. In contrast to Netanyahu, she described Yair Lapid, Israel’s current caretaker prime minister — Netanyahu’s rival in the upcoming 2022 election — refusing to deliver a bouquet sent by Milchan when he was appointed finance minister in 2013. When The well-connected Milchan once forgot an expensive set of headphones at Lapid’s home, “Arnon told me to tell him to just leave them there. Yair called and told me, “There is no way. Send the driver to pick it up.
She relayed memories of the time Hugh Jackman allegedly met Netanyahu, which became another opportunity for the prime minister to get away with cigars. Judge Moshe Baram, a member of the three-judge panel hearing the case, asked Klein how he knew “the cigars weren’t for the actor?”
Klein replied, “Because I was there. The cigars were for Netanyahu.
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