The court should announce the suspension of Netanyahu's trial until the cloud of police espionage is finally removed

And also, back to an interesting historical story that will remind how the left and the press behaved in the face of police rampage in wiretapping, and in the face of violations of individual rights, when these were politically appropriate for them

Kalman Liebskind

12/02/2022

Saturday, 12 February 2022, 20:16 Updated: 20:41

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Admittedly, it was quite embarrassing to read the reactions of some of our senior politicians to Tomer Ganun's shaky exposure in "Calcalist."

Merav Michaeli, like some journalists, dropped the case on Benjamin Netanyahu.

It was important for Nitzan Horowitz to make it clear that the charges against the former prime minister are more serious than the new affair.

Amar Bar-Lev emphasized that this was a "scorched field" left by the previous government.

Some media people reminded Netanyahu that if the responsibility for this affair lies with former Commissioner Roni Alshikh, then the Likud chairman himself is to blame for it, because he appointed Alshikh.

As always, Yair Lapid took first place in the competition for unrelated responses, explaining that the first to be investigated in this case is Amir Ohana, who was appointed Minister of Internal Security in mid-2020, long years after all the phone hacking began.

So it's true that in politics you try to see at any given moment what can serve your group, but it is idiotic to blame Netanyahu in the affair, when at least according to the publications - his environment seems like its biggest victim.

And it's idiotic to blame Netanyahu, when no one really thinks he had anything to do with what's going on inside the police signet unit, and the question of who is being listened to.

And it is idiotic to accuse Netanyahu of cultivating Alsheikh, with the accusations coming from those who served in devotion as the cheering band of that Alsheikh.

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It is idiotic to blame him for the affair.

Netanyahu (Photo: Reuven Castro)

Roni Alsich, we will remind those who forgot, took office when large sections of the press organized a reception for him that ranged from a sour face to contemptuous whistles.

It started with the dome on his head, which burned in the eyes of quite a few journalists.

A senior commentator in Haaretz warned of this dome even when Alsheikh was in the GSS

. Who mentioned that he was a "former settler ... wearing a kippah ... a religious extremist."

Channel 10 then read to viewers a post written on Facebook by a friend of Roni Alshikh's wife, who told of her mother, who was attacked with stones on the Mount of Olives, and criticized the police for doing nothing about it - mentioning that the commissioner's wife, not us, shared this post. And to explain how bad things are going to be with the designated commissioner, they added that "senior officers raise great concern about how Roni Alshikh is handling sensitive issues related to the ultra-Orthodox sector, and especially to senior rabbis who may be required at some point for questioning."

Sounds like a distant history, right?

Completely.

Because as soon as Alsheikh marked himself as the face of the investigations against Netanyahu, the media made a U-turn and began to embrace him.

From that moment on, every question, every question and every criticism was presented by the mainstream media as a rebellion against the monarchy.

Important sections of the press, as in other regimes, have become the mouthpiece of the commissioner, and he, a guy no one can underestimate,

Either way, these automatic political responses threw me 18 or so years back, into October 2003, and into an event that has very many similarities between it and what we were exposed to this week.

Even then it was illegal eavesdropping.

Even then it was the police who crossed the permitted borders.

Even then there were journalists and politicians who what mainly bothered them was that handling the police rampage would indirectly help a politician hated by them from the right-wing camp.

At the time, this politician was called Ariel Sharon.

Today his name is Benjamin Netanyahu.

Who guards the guards?

That story revolved around police investigations conducted at the National Police Unit (International Unit for International Investigations) against Avigdor Lieberman. The police received permission from the court to listen to Lieberman, his assistant Michael Gorlovsky and businessman David Apple, To transcribe and not to keep other conversations, private or political

.

A report written by the attorney general about Mizrahi's actions summarized how the senior investigating officer was responsible for wholesale transcripts and the preservation of masses of private, political and other conversations of Lieberman, which were in no way related to the suspicions against him.

Rubinstein then came for a discussion in the Knesset's Constitution Committee, and detailed to the Knesset members his shock at what his eyes saw when he went through the transcripts of the transcripts.

70% of the transcripts of the recordings, he said, were not relevant at all to the investigation.

He also detailed.

"Political conversations during the election period, conversations with journalists, party polls and also intimate conversations, unbelievable how they were transcribed ... party faxes."

"Did the goal - which is important in itself - sanctify the means? ...", the consultant wondered.

"Who will guard the guards?" He asked.

"Everyone sitting here and his dignity will think ... Did he want his small talk with journalists or other politicians to be transcribed or what was being done in the party, one way or another. Was he interested in it or did he see it as a proper thing in this story, not To talk about issues of a personal and intimate nature. "

The media made a U-turn and began to embrace it.

Ashlich (Photo: Flash 90, Yonatan Zindel)

Even then, just like today, everything immediately went to the political field.

Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, a Likud member, was under investigation at the time, and left-wing Knesset members feared that harming senior Mizrahi investigator - even if it crossed several red lines - would help head the rival party.

From this place they stormed the counselor.

"I do not agree that the letter Cain should be imprinted on Mizrahi in his forehead on this matter," said MK Ophir Pines of Labor

. "Meretz also joined him. He was also harmed by the possible harm in Sharon's interrogation, more than he was disturbed by Mizrahi's conduct. It is not possible to throw the chief investigator to the dogs the day before Sharon's interrogation, he claimed. Avrom Burg, a Labor member, also joined." "There is a problem of appearance here," he said.

And it does not end in the Knesset.

Prof. Mordechai Kremnitzer defended Mizrahi, and later also claimed that Minister Gideon Ezra, who later fired Mizrahi from his post following the affair, was acting with "boldness."

The press, too, immersed in its position, hugged the police officer.

In Haaretz, one writer warned that the Mizrahi affair is an "effort to castrate the police investigation department."

Another senior commentator for the newspaper declared that Rubinstein deserved an award on behalf of bin Laden and Vigal Amir.

All this even before we mentioned Yedioth Ahronoth and its senior investigative reporter, Motti Gilat, who was Mizrahi's great patron in the press, before and after this event.

"There is a symbiosis relationship between a group of journalists and leakers," Attorney General Eliakim Rubinstein defined it in a lecture he gave at the time.

"There is a correlation between news items published over the years and a list of writers that rewards those who had their sources. This is a give-and-take reciprocity relationship. Give it to me - and I will write good about you."

The violation of the rights of the individual, the rampage of the senior investigator, his overzealousness that led to a massive transcript of private conversations in a manner contrary to the court order, all of these did not play a role where politics played.

There is no argument here that the right has no political interests, or that it does not consider them when it comes to expressing a position on such issues.

And it is still always fascinating to see how the Israeli left, which the protection of civil rights stars in its identity card, is right to easily forgive the police aggressiveness.

As of today, so then, his representatives have first of all made the profit and loss account they will have from this event.

to rethink

We are in a battle fog.

On the one hand, Calcalist's claims are harsh and shake the foundations.

On the other hand, there is still no evidence and findings, there are plenty of denials, and given the need to examine things, great care must be taken.

Therefore, everything that will be written here rests on two important basis points.

One, that things are written at a certain point in time, and any future findings that may be published can change the factual situation, here or there.

The second, that we should put aside for a moment all the assessments and guesses and hypotheses, and engage only in what we know, and only in what has been published.

No claims about a "government coup" on the one hand, and no claims that the revelations do not raise or lower anything in Netanyahu's files on the other.

The list of hacking targets, as published this week, shows that it is not possible to connect its victims to Netanyahu.

The claim that the entire plot to use the spy was unlawfully directed at the Likud chairman and his people has no basis in fact. And there are also some mayors, and all of these have nothing to do with Netanyahu.

It is, as mentioned, on the one hand. But there is also a other side. This, even if it is only part of the burglary targets, is not a small group, and the activity against it raises questions. Related to other factors related to the investigation conducted against him.

What can we learn about it?

Not much at the moment, mainly because as mentioned the truth of the claims is still unclear.

Despite all this, the court will do the right thing if it announces that it is suspending the continuation of the former prime minister's trial for a while.

True, when we talk about the system's need to enjoy public trust, there is already little such trust in everything related to Netanyahu's cases, and it is doubtful whether Netanyahu's supporters will receive a verdict that is not his full acquittal.

And yet, having said that, the present story takes us to a place we have never been before.

It is possible that the test conducted in the face of the exposure of "Calcalist" will reveal that the publication was incorrect.

The investigation may reveal that the publication is partly true, but it does not touch on Netanyahu's files.

But without the findings of a serious and in-depth investigation, it is impossible to proceed as if nothing had happened here.

What is the difference between Netanyahu and the other people the publications concern?

Well, there are two fundamental differences.

One, as stated, concerns the fact that too many of the objectives of these wiretaps are related to Netanyahu, his people, his family, and the objectives of his investigations.

The second is that Netanyahu is the only one who is currently undergoing a lively, breathing and active process.

I'm not jealous of Emmy Palmor, who found out this week that someone might have stolen her phone.

But in her case nothing is happening at the moment.

A trial is currently underway against Netanyahu, whose lovers and haters will agree that he is one of the most important in the country's history, and when such a cloud hovers over the way the police penetrated the phones of everyone around him, it is impossible to continue as if nothing had happened.

This demand, it seems to me, should not come only from Netanyahu or those who demand his good.

It should also come, and perhaps rather, from the side of his political opponents, or from the side of those who believe that it is right that a procedure be conducted here that can be trusted to be clean.

If that was the first question mark imposed on the conduct of the proceedings against Netanyahu, fine.

The point is that this is not the first event nor the second.

A few months ago, in a judgment handed down in a Supreme Court case in another case, Judge Neil Handel used an interesting example.

Suppose, he said, that there is a criminal prohibition on placing a pile of sand in the middle of a main road.

Placing one grain of sand on the road is not a matter of laying a pile, so it will be allowed.

Even so, if a person repeats this action over and over again, then at some point, when enough grains accumulate on the road, there will be the same pile that the law forbade to lay.

Well, quite a few grains have been placed in Netanyahu's files so far.

Opening an investigation without written approval from the Attorney General was such a grain.

And the pressure on Nir Hefetz to change lawyer was such a grain.

And Hefetz's interrogation - from the conditions of his detention to the use of the dirty maneuvers taken against him - was another grain.

And the illegal search of the mobile phones of Yonatan Orich and Ofer Golan, in a side case of the big affair, was a grain of salt.

And the illegal intrusion into Shlomo Pilber's phone, and according to Calcalist's investigation, into the devices of several others in Netanyahu's environment - if it turns out that it was done, there may be another grain, which will begin to paint a picture of a pile.

Put aside for a moment the allegations that a coup d'état took place here, that the cases collapsed, and that everything was sewn up.

Leave the interpretations, leave the political positions, and let's just stay with the facts.

These facts should lead to thinking.

Not for acquittal, not for closing the procedure, but for understanding that if the latest publication turns out to be accurate, then an essay is accumulating here.

There is a glitch in every case, but when it comes to another event and another event, there comes a moment when it can no longer be ignored.

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