After digesting the five-balloon speech, which sounds like it was written by Prime Minister Netanyahu with his own hands, it's hard not to think about the sixth balloon. The big balloon dancing in the middle of the room, while all the balloons come down from the ceiling and the Knesset and the streets bloom more and more colorful bubbles into the air like a birthday.
This is the balloon of the bribery case. When the indictment was filed, the word "bribe" received huge headlines and was recycled through graphic and propaganda means, from the front pages of the morning newspapers to the afternoon newspapers and the evening and early evening commentaries. This week it looked like the giant advertising signs of the old spectacle films, after the movie theater closed. Letters bloom in the air. Letters fall into the plaza in front of the closed cinema. There are perhaps three letters left above the large entrance to the hall: 6-8-4. It's hard to understand what the original word was that attracted so many audiences.
The entire exploding sixth balloon bush drained onto social media, on its various channels. There people with well-known names splashed and filtered and emitted and gravel and chewed. But in the mainstream press, the fall of the bribery case, which drove the country crazy and was the focus of the political collapse of the past five years, got less airtime than "Wagner Force." No, not the Wagner force's act of rebellion on its much-publicized trip to Moscow, but the unfortunate slip of the mouth of Orit Strzok, who said of the security forces, "What are you, Wagner Force?" It's easy. It's like saying "dictatorship."
The bribery story from the outset seems far-fetched. It was cooked with derogatory headlines about champagne and cigars and submarines. After inflating headlines depicting the prime minister and his wife like Mr. and Mrs. Imelda Marcos or the Ceauşescus, symbols of an era of corruption and arrogance, rigidity and murderous tyranny, one can easily create the murky current. Like a river whose water sources are up in the mountains, and they flow south. All the investigators and prosecutors become wooden spoons. Throw them into the murky water, and no matter what state of mind they were in before, they drift downstream.
Now fashion is a lawyer with everything. Legal scholars know what democracy is. They know what security is. They know what human rights and civil rights are. They know what proportionality and enlightenment and substantiveness are. They know and understand economics. Business. Strategy. In gas drilling. Communication.
So no. As Prof. Richard Posner said in his famous confrontation with President Aharon Barak, jurists are ordinary people who have specialized in laws and exploiting the legal arena for various purposes. But they have no understanding of other areas of expertise. Does anyone who writes codes for the behavior of students, teachers and parents in school also know the history of the Jewish people, math and English poetry, and how to teach all of these? That's pretty much the story with the jurists who are infested with every crack in the administration, and just this week we received a reminder that Gil Limon, Mandelblit's assistant, warns that eliminating reasonableness endangers democracy.
Everything looked bad once the issue of "positive headlines" became the subject of an investigation by the police, who summon journalists from the field and from the editing desks. The journalists and all the media behind them agreed to this process. It was a clear thought police process, because the system's considerations in providing headlines and coverage are not a deal of the police or the State Prosecutor's Office. Only in totalitarian countries is it like this. The Attorney General and the State Attorney were alerted, but they apparently found that a precedent-setting bribery clause, which also puts the offense of bribery at the level of a "basket offense," as Prof. Amnon Rubinstein warned years ago, is an innovative and wonderful patent. Not only to convict Prime Minister Netanyahu, but mainly to turn the police and the State Prosecutor's Office into a permanent shadow that participates in editorial meetings. Boom bother! The balloon ruptured.
What grows in the beds
Inspired by Ehud Barak and his friends, the political center is sliding into radicalization, which in the past was the province of small, marginal groups from the radical left
In all instances of activity against the legal reform, from the least harmful to the mass violence in front of Justice Minister Yariv Levin's home in Modi'in, the context is lacking. What is the phenomenon we are seeing. There is agreement that the participants of the actions broke all the rules, crossed the red lines, and in some cases, as in intelligence, also broke the law.
The context is that of a campaign against the State of Israel, Israeli society, while employing the strategy designed to bring about the disintegration and disintegration of Israeli society. It doesn't matter what terms they use, no matter what frowning commentators call them on the radio or other media. In many cases these are good, high-quality people, "salt of the earth".
We must return to what Dr. Yoel Fishman wrote in the past: "The declared reasons for the mass demonstrations, ostensibly against the 'legal reform' and the 'regime coup,' are not the real reasons... What are the real goals of the leaders of the 'resistance'? First of all, it must be emphasized that they use methods of political warfare of delegitimization against the state and against the internal glue of society as used by our sworn enemies. These methods include encouraging internal strife and social disintegration and deliberate attacks against the national resilience of the country. These methods are not suitable for honest political debate in a civilized country with parliamentary democracy." One by one, it was possible to categorize actions that were carried out that damaged the connection points of society and the state, and their effect was like IEDs attached to various constructions in order to bring them down.
On February 23 of this year, Ehud Barak nailed the evening at a conference of Haaretz, Zehava Galon's Zulat organization and the New Israel Fund. There is not much Zionism in these organizations. In his appearance, Barak declared that his goal was to overthrow the government, no matter what the cost. He claimed that "historical experience proves that when 3.5 percent of the population persists in the demonstrations with determination by all means at their disposal, the government will collapse or fall. I don't know what damage will happen along the way, but I am convinced that we will win because we are on the right side of history, and we are not afraid of anything or anyone" (Report in The Times of Israel, February 25). In these words, Barak adhered to the concept that the end justifies the means.
Burning tires at a demonstration near the home of Justice Minister Levin, Photo: Jonathan Shaul
Dr. Fishman cites the examples presented by the well-known statesman and historian George F. Kennan, who shaped the West's doctrine of containment and containment against communism in the Cold War, and in the last days of his life even predicted what was happening before our eyes in Ukraine. Kennan naively claimed that the instigators of the riots protesting the Vietnam War were "wrong" by attacking primarily the institutions of the American government and regime, rather than the foundations of American policy under Johnson and Nixon.
The incitement of Ehud Barak, Olmert, Halutz, Yair Golan and others marked the course for participants in ideological political violence. What is unprecedented is the mobilization of parts of the "best youth," as they say, in a struggle that in the past was the province of small and marginal groups from the radical anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian left. People from the center of the spectrum are talking and doing things that Anarchists Against the Wall or Breaking the Silence or Machsom Watch used to do. As a matter of fact, in terms of activity, the men and women of Breaking the Silence and Machsom Watch have never committed acts of physical violence, certainly not outside of Israel.
Dr. Fishman estimates that if activity continues within the framework of "their plans to destabilize the existing democratic structure... They are likely to lead to a phase of violence, including civil war, defeat and revolution." Shh... The enemy is listening.
Turn off the rogue microphone
Apart from a small circle of creators, most of the media and the press share the panic and silencing responses of criticism of the judicial system in general, and the State Prosecutor's Office in particular
President Aharon Barak once joined a tour of courts in the periphery under the guidance of retired judge Boaz Okun. They heard the judges' complaints that the thought of auditing bodies dealing with judges paralyzes their work. "Barak responded that judges are not smarter than anyone else, solely because they were appointed to judge." To reinforce his remarks, he quoted one of his predecessors, Moshe Landavi: "Whoever climbs the tallest spire of the tallest church tower and stands there shouting, should not be surprised if the ravens croak near his ears." Then he added something Landoy didn't say: "And don't be surprised if they shitty him on the head." This is presented in an article by Inbal Bar-On, who reported on a meeting of the Israeli Bar Association in February 2009 following the initiative of Professors Meni Mautner and Amnon Rubinstein to establish a body to audit the State Attorney's Office. The two most prominent guests at the stormy hearing were retired judge Boaz Okun and Prof. Boaz Sanjero.
Most of the statements were severe and humorless. There were accusations by jurists that "the State Attorney's Office is drunk with power," and that "the State Attorney's Office is used to indisputing, including the judges. [The State Prosecutor's Office] sows terror among the public by claiming that if it is not given powers, the rule of law will be damaged."
Since then, the State Prosecutor's Office has been busy angrily repelling any shadow of criticism in order to prevent the necessary repairs in such a powerful body, which has caused quite a bit of damage to Israeli society. The initiators of the idea of establishing a body to audit the State Attorney's Office certainly took note of the cases of Raful, Yaakov Neeman, Reuven Rivlin, Avigdor Kahalani and others. At the end of the first decade of the century, the affair of Haim Ramon and his dubious trial reverberated powerfully. A few years later, it was not professionals who absorbed the wrath of the judicial system, but also the media. It should be noted that this is a remote circle of the media, in which the documentary filmmakers are located in television and film.
The series "Shadow of Truth" about the Tair Rada affair grabbed headlines. Here are the reactions to the series at another of the senior jurists' conferences in April 2016. "In her speech, Supreme Court President Miriam Naor said that 'alternative courts must be wary,' adding that the series led to 'sensational publications purporting to know the whole truth, even when the hypotheses raised in them have no real factual basis.'" This was quoted in an article by Itai Stern in Haaretz.
State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan criticized the media outlets that provide a broad platform for "conspiracy theories." "Such theories are generally treated with leniency, but we must all understand that this is a real danger to democracy. Criminal trials are not reality shows, where the public is asked to text whether the accused is guilty or innocent." All in connection with the Zadorov trial and the murder of Tair Rada.
The documentarists in this case fought back. Dror Mora ("The Gatekeepers," which was nominated for an Oscar) argued against Nitzan that "his words are scrambled nonsense. Why is he afraid of some criticism? What exactly is he afraid of?" Guy Davidi, creator of "5 Broken Cameras," responded in Stern's article that "nothing justifies such an extreme and distorted statement as that of Nitzan and Naor. The problem is that this is the spirit of things in which the country is going. Any work that criticizes becomes a danger to democracy." Added Documentary Creators Forum Chairwoman Osnat Trabelsi: "There is a danger in the words of Shai Nitzan, who marks documentary work as a danger to democracy."
It is impossible to ignore the phenomenon that has arisen over the years, namely the panic and violent reactions of the judicial system, and especially the State Prosecutor's Office, in the face of criticism that appears in the media. But these were mostly docu-makers acting like a distant artillery battery, firing a barrage to the front at a rate of twice a year, if not once every two years. On the issue of root canal treatment in the State Attorney's Office, proponents of legal reform also have partners among those who strongly oppose that reform.
But what about print journalism itself? As early as 2008, Prof. Mautner argued that journalists tend to cooperate with and assist the State Prosecutor's Office. There is no doubt that Netanyahu's files, the process surrounding the indictment, and the trial itself created a unified party line, and this suited the judicial system, from those senior judges sitting in the highest turret to the last prosecutor and investigator. Suddenly, from a danger to civil rights and a threat to democracy, they became knights of the rule of law and defenders of democracy. And if there's some rogue microphone on the street that shows an upside-down picture, we'll shut it up.
Wrong? We'll fix it! If you find a mistake in the article, please share with us