So Benjamin Netanyahu has decided he wants a pardon, but still won't admit guilt and as a result is turning into his biggest self own to date. Right, so you always know a government has gone past the point of embarrassment and into full-blown panic when the man running it tries to escape his own trial while still standing in the dock, and that’s exactly what Benjamin Netanyahu has just done. A sitting prime minister, still facing three corruption cases, still denying every charge, still telling the country the courts will vindicate him, suddenly decides the safest place to be is nowhere near a verdict and asks the president to make the whole thing disappear. And you don’t get clearer than that do you? People confident in acquittal don’t beg for pardons. People who trust the process don’t try to dodge it and protests outside the president’s house before breakfast tell you everything you need to know. If Netanyahu thought this was the way out at this point, he’s got it catastrophically wrong. Right, so you always know a political era is creaking when the people running it start trying to escape the very systems they’ve spent years insisting still work, and that’s exactly what has happened with Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to request a presidential pardon while still on trial, because this isn’t a routine legal step or some procedural tidying-up, it’s a sitting prime minister trying to end his own corruption trial before the court has finished hearing it, still without admitting guilt, without accepting responsibility, and without even pretending the process has reached a point where clemency would normally be considered. It lands as a moment where the system feels it twitch, because a move like this tells you he no longer trusts the process to deliver the outcome he has spent five years telling his supporters is inevitable, and that’s the point where you can see the politics through the legal paperwork, because nobody confident of acquittal asks for the trial to suddenly disappear.