Two days after the publication of a petition by 20 Knesset Members against Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch in the matter of her surreptitious meeting with the American ambassador to Israel, she is under fire again, this time from the president of a lower Israeli court. Tel Aviv Magistrates' Court President Edna Beckenstein accused Beinisch of issuing a statement that has "no grounds in reality" regarding why Magistrates' Court judge Chayuta Kochan was not being considered for promotion.
Beckenstein's accusations were triggered by reports in the media which said that Judge Kochan's name would not come up for promotion in the next session of the Committee for Appointment of Judges. Kochan is one of the judges in the Tel Aviv Magistrates' Court. According to Yediot Acharonot daily newspaper, Kochan told her friends that Beinisch called her on the phone and told her that Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann wanted to avenge Kochan's guilty verdict against his friend Chaim Ramon and had her name removed from the list of candidates for promotion.
Supreme Court website.
This claim turned out to be untrue, according to Channel 2 and Nfc website: Friedmann's bureau had nothing to do with the removal of Kochan's name from the promotion list. When asked for an explanation, the news sources reported, Beinisch issued one through the Courts Management Spokesperson, who said that Kochan was not put up for promotion because of "needs of the Magistrates' Court."
This was the point at which Judge Beckenstein got involved. According to Channel 2 television's court reporter Guy Peleg, Beckenstein was furious when she heard that Beinisch was placing the responsibility for Kochan's promotion woes on her shoulders. She fired off an angry letter to Beinisch from Germany, where she is currently visiting.
Yalla-Kadima website
Beckenstein told Beinisch that, as the Tel Aviv Magistrates' Court President, she wishes to "protest determinedly" in the matter of the Court Management Spokesperson's statement, which she said "had no grounds in reality." Beckenstein said that she had received no request of any kind from the Supreme Court President regarding the list of the candidates for promotion. "No one checked out anything with me regarding the needs of the Magistrates' Court for which I am in responsible," she told Beinisch, adding somewhat caustically that "in order to dispel all doubts, I can be reached at any place and time by means of my cellular phone."
Beckenstein wrote that Beinisch was "throwing sand in the public's eyes" and added that whoever was responsible for taking Kochan out of the list needed to stand behind his or her decision, "with all that this entails." Channel 2 called this letter "unprecedented," in the degree to which the Magistrates' Court President criticized the Supreme Court President.
According to Yediot Acharonot, Kochan told her friends that Beinisch called her on the phone and told her that Friedmann wanted to avenge Kochan's guilty verdict against his friend Chaim Ramon 
Channel 10 television news' Baruch Kra reported Beinisch's latest version on the matter Tuesday night. According to this version, the reason Kochan was not on the list was that Beinisch believed Kochan's name would be struck down by Justice Minister Friedmann at the Committee for Appointment of Judges, of which Friedmann is a member.
The conspiracy theory
Kochan headed the three-judge panel which found Vice Prime Minister Chaim Ramon guilty of a sexual offense last January, in the matter of a consensual kiss with a female soldier which the soldier claimed Ramon took too far. The verdict forced Ramon to resign from his post as Minister of Justice and serve a community service sentence before he was brought back to the government. His post as Justice Minister was taken, meanwhile, by Prof. Daniel Friedmann.
The "conspiracy theory," which has been making its rounds within and without the legal system ever since the Ramon trial, is that Beinisch had intervened with Judge Kochan in the matter of Ramon's trial, and made sure that Ramon - whose proposed reforms she bitterly opposed - would be found guilty (numerous legal commentators, including Prof. Friedmann himself, who published an article on the Ramon case before he became Justice Minister, claimed that the case against Ramon was exceedingly problematic and that the trial was slanted against Ramon). Kochan, who was due for promotion, cooperated. According to this theory, Beinisch decided to cancel Kochan's promotion in order to try and weaken the rumors that she had conspired with Kochan.