A new film is taking the world by storm. Few had heard of it before its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. In a few months, it has skyrocketed in popularity to being nominated at this year’s Academy Awards. But perhaps most surprising is its star: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Bibi Files, directed by Alexis Bloom, claims to tell the story of Netanyahu’s rise to power through “an unflinching gaze into the private world behind the headlines.” It uses footage from the Israel Police interrogations of Netanyahu and other figures related to his corruption trial.

What Is It About?

In 2023, an anonymous source gave producer Alex Gibney the leaked footage. The footage provides little that the public didn’t already know. Netanyahu has stood trial for the past several years on bribery charges. The allegations are that he accepted gifts for favors from prominent Israeli businessmen. But the public got to see Netanyahu, as well as his wife, Sara, and son Yair, squirm uncomfortably as police throw questions and accusations at them. Also included is footage from other witnesses and interviews with prominent Netanyahu critics.

Facts should speak for themselves, and if the facts condemn somebody, then so be it. But The Bibi Files goes well past the boundaries of objectivity. Any new information the film reveals is tarnished by blatant politicking and character assassination. The film portrays hearsay and opinionated smears as established facts. Some of its material could be in the realm of slander.

The police footage provided is just that—police footage. It is not an admission of guilt on Netanyahu’s or anybody else’s part. His trial has been ongoing since 2020. The police would have collected a lot of interrogation footage over those years. For all the public knows, The Bibi Files cherry-picks the worst of the worst footage. There could have been even more footage of Netanyahu successfully defending himself.

The authorities have reached no verdict yet. Netanyahu has faced legal troubles for decades without being convicted of anything. Yet The Bibi Files repeatedly implies Netanyahu’s guilt for every accusation slapped on him since the 1990s. Some of the interviewees framed their opinions as “expert analyses” of Netanyahu’s character without showing qualifications.

One of the interviewees relied on most was Nimrod Novik, an aide to the late President Shimon Peres. Somehow, his being a political commentator gave him the clout to claim everything Netanyahu has done for the past five years was motivated by “that sound of the [prison] gate potentially slammed behind his back.”

The film goes to unnecessary lengths to examine Netanyahu’s relationship with his wife and son. It claims Sara was the power behind Benjamin’s throne, holding undue influence over his premiership, but no concrete evidence is provided. Yair is depicted as a partisan hack. Both Sara and Yair are connected to Netanyahu’s charges in his trial. But what does an in-depth analysis of “Queen Sara” henpecking her husband have to do with the criminal charges? Even if Yair were a partisan right-winger, what’s illegal about that?

What Are Its Implications?

The most concerning aspects of The Bibi Files is the claim that everything Netanyahu did in the last five years stems from covering tracks in his corruption trial. The film claims Netanyahu started his Supreme Court reform program to protect himself. It claims he let Hamas govern Gaza to keep the Palestinians divided and to protect himself. It claims Netanyahu’s fixation with protecting himself meant he left Israel unprepared for October 7—putting the ultimate blame for the 2023 invasion on him. And it claims Netanyahu’s prolonged war in Gaza is, again, to protect himself.

This is despite a large segment of Israelis supporting these policies. Other motivations, like fulfilling pledges to his voters, are discarded.

Perhaps most tellingly, the film ties Netanyahu’s “pattern of behavior” with his refusal to support a two-state solution and recognize a Palestinian state. This has nothing to do with his corruption trial. A large segment of Israeli society has never accepted the two-state solution. Even fewer of them do since Oct. 7, 2023.

The Bibi Files, in short, makes Netanyahu look like the source of all of Israel’s problems. But Netanyahu and his coalition partners continue to form governments because millions of Israelis support his program. Even if Israelis don’t like him personally, many of the policies he represents are still popular.

The Bibi Files is a smear campaign over Israeli right-wing thought in general. It paints anybody within the right-wing mainstream—anybody who thinks the two-state solution would create a terrorist state on Israel’s borders, or who is concerned that Israel’s unelected judicial bureaucrats have too much power, or who believes that ending the Gaza war early would lead to a repeat of October 7—as an intolerable stain on Israeli society. Benjamin Netanyahu and the corruption allegations against him are only the visible tip of the iceberg.

The question also remains how The Bibi Files acquired the interrogation footage. Publishing police interrogation footage without court permission can land somebody up to a year in prison. Yet unlike Netanyahu, The Bibi Files is allowed to break the law with impunity “because it is for a good cause.”

What Is the End Goal?

Netanyahu is not a Julius Caesar-type figure destroying Israeli democracy. Nobody accuses him of gaining power outside of winning legitimate elections. The Bibi Files admits this. But trying to sway public opinion through a suave, high-profile character assassination that pretends to have more substance than it actually has—especially when the production companies and director aren’t even Israeli—is an attack on Israeli democracy.

This makes it all the more concerning that The Bibi Files is being pushed by so many foreign film groups. The film gained international publicity through its debut at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences deemed it important enough to be nominated for Best Documentary at the upcoming Academy Awards. Hollywood’s elites appear to agree with the film’s premise.

The final scene shows Netanyahu getting up from an interrogation, thanking the police, shaking their hands, and leaving. The implication is clear: If the justice system doesn’t find him guilty, it’s only because he was able to charm his way out of trouble again.

Corruption allegations are serious. But The Bibi Files isn’t about Netanyahu getting champagne and cigars from a tainted source. It’s about foreign filmmakers trying to tell the Israeli public how to vote. And it’s about trying to recruit an even bigger anti-Netanyahu crusade from abroad.

“Democracy is under attack in the Jewish nation of Israel,” Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote for our August 2023 issue. “They [referring to certain Israeli leaders] are accusing Netanyahu of trying to overthrow Israel’s democracy. That is a lie! He is trying to restore democracy. … It seems to me that civil war is looming. A few men believe they have the right to make decisions for the whole country and that no elected leaders can stop them.”

Mr. Flurry was writing in the context of the protests against Netanyahu’s judicial reform program. But the same can be said about Netanyahu’s conservative agenda in general. And the problem isn’t restricted to a few Israeli leaders. As the popularity of The Bibi Files shows, it is worldwide.

This kind of division threatens to throw Israel into chaos. But there are bigger issues at play than one man’s political career. To learn what they are, read Mr. Flurry’s article “The Jewish Nation Has No Helper.”