Yotan Eyal - is a lawyer who heads the Legal Forum for Israel.
In the previous articles (here and here), we examined the development of the deep state in Israel and its organized efforts to take control of the unelected levers of power within Israel, the judiciary and the bureaucracy. After losing the 1977 Knesset election the deep state was intent on establishing uninterrupted growth of its own power and control and the long-term positions in the courts and the institutions of governmental operations would afford it that without the interference of election cycles.
In its creation the legal system was intended to apply the laws the Knesset wrote and was necessarily separate from the elected Knesset to preserve its impartiality. In a later article we will examine the “small steps” that ultimately redefined that relationship, establishing Supreme Court power over the Knesset. Understanding that to be the goal, this article will examine one of the deep state's significant tools that would allow it to implement the “steps”, the use of criminal investigations and indictments against individuals. Fabricated legal processes were used in various ways that allow it to steer the country in the direction it wanted and to harass people who might obstruct that. Sometimes these tools even caused people to become part of the deep state mechanism.
There are three main strategies that the deep state uses in order to fabricate criminal cases.
The first is to invent a case, to establish it in the public’s mind through leaks, generally to the media, that there is a serious case that is being investigated though no case at all exists. This works because it is impossible to prove a negative and it takes years, if ever, to prove that there really was no case. By that time it is resolved that there never was a case no one will remember the specific case but the damage will have been done.
The second strategy consists of inflating an abstruse case into a monstrous claim of "corruption". Normally, such a case would never become a criminal case, but the public does not understand, those who know don’t want to risk themselves becoming targets and the elected official, the target person understands the message. Often, the case disappears after that person then aligns himself or herself with the deep state’s position. Disappears, but might not be closed.
The third strategy is the infamous Soviet “Show Me the Person and I’ll Show You the Crime”. Files of potentially felonious material are collected and maintained on elected officials, officials are pressured with the threat to use it against them. The material collected may relate to actual criminal offenses, strategy one or two above or simply uncomfortable situations, however the prosecutors, who have all the information, decide to do nothing about it until the need arises to control the elected official. This strategy is completely illegal as the law that states that prosecutors must prosecute when they learn of an offense.
All three strategies are illegal, all three rely on limited public scrutiny, limited public disclosure and limited public understanding and all three are often accompanied by gag orders against the target preventing them from presenting exculpatory evidence on pain of incarceration. The prosecution, in collaboration with the media to which they constantly leak information that serves their purpose, creates and reinforces the idea that there is unique and rampant corruption to be found among elected officials, and only they can save the country. The target is barred from responding. These dictatorial strategies allow the prosecutorial authorities to continue to operate under the radar and to actually control the country.
Not all three strategies are used with the same frequency. The first is the rarest because it is the most dangerous for the deep state. With absolutely no factual basis for the case it could fall apart.
The second strategy is much more common. In 1996 Netanyahu sought to appoint Yaakov Neeman as Minister of Justice. Neeman, the head of the largest law firm in Israel understood that some changes needed to be made in the justice system. It is said that the day before his appointment, Yaakov Neeman met with Attorney General Michael Ben Yair and informed him that he was going to replace Ben Yair. The next day, criminal investigations were opened against Neeman by the Attorney General for perjury and submitting a false affidavit. Neeman resigned from the ministerial position and was ultimately acquitted of the offenses on the grounds that he committed them in good faith.
The same strategy was used to thwart the candidacy of Reuven Rivlin (later President of the State) as Minister of Justice, as was briefly mentioned in the previous article. In 2000-2001 Rivlin was a vocal opponent of Aharon Barak who was at the time the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and his judicial activism. When former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon sought to appoint Reuven Rivlin Minister of Justice in 2001, seven criminal investigations were opened against him for ties to a contractor named Dudi Apple. Rivlin abandoned the nomination to be Minister of Justice and was instead appointed Minister of Communications. All seven criminal cases were then closed. There is no venue so a causal link has never been proven, the reader can decide if there was intent. The reader can also consider if the direction of the state may have been different had Neeman and RIvlin been Ministers of Justice.
Former Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan (Raful) also received similar treatment when he was nominated for the position of Minister of Internal Security (the minister responsible for the police) in 1996. A criminal investigation was opened against Eitan claiming that Eitan and his Tzomet party illegally used personal information from military databases in a political campaign. Eitan agreed that he had used the information claiming it was not illegal and the court agreed and found that there was no offense. In the meantime Eitan’s candidacy to a position where his experience and knowledge could have been effectively used was thwarted and he was appointed Minister of Agriculture instead.
Yet another case from that time is the case of Dror Hoter-Yishai, who was the chairman of the Bar Association. Hoter-Yishai staunchly opposed Chief Justice Aharon Barak and his judicial activism, Hoter-Yishai also led the Bar Association and the Bar’s representatives on the Committee for Selecting Judges where his choices could help maintain balance in the judicial system by opposing Barak’s choices for judicial appointments that were always designed to consolidate his judicial activism.
In 1996, a first investigation was opened against him for tax offenses; in 1998, a second investigation was opened for advising a partner who had committed criminal offenses, and in 1998 a third investigation for contempt of court for criticizing the authorities for their behavior towards him, as well as an ethics case in the Bar Association's ethics committee that was closed after he lost the next election to head the Bar Association.
Hoter-Yishai was eventually acquitted in all the cases, but in the meantime, the deep state, by means of their “investigations”, managed to cause him to lose his position in the bar association, and his position on the judicial selection committee. His replacement knew it was not a good idea to oppose the judicial choices of the judges. In a later article we will discuss Chaver Mayvee Cahver, friends appointing friends.
The third strategy was exposed 2018 in the Knesset by Brigadier General Guy Nir, when he detailed how the police and the Attorney General's Office maintains files on about 300 senior people and they hold the information for the future, when they may want to put pressure on those people. In this way, the Attorney General's Office bends people to its will.
One of the cases is that of former Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit. Mandelblit was Netanyahu’s chief of staff and considered a close friend and confidant of the Prime Minister.
In 2014 Mandelblit was a suspect in a document leak scandal called the Harpaz affair. Harpaz created a fake document about Gabi Ashkenazi and Ehud Barak that used the document to make Barak look bad. Mandelblit was accused of knowing the Harpaz document was fake. The files against Mandelblit were shut to everyone's surprise and he was appointed Attorney General in 2015. In2016 Mandelblit opened cases 1000, 2000, 4000 against Netanyahu, cases which will also be the subject of a future article.
Anyone who checked would have found that though the files against Mandelblit were shut, the cases were never officially closed. Years later, in 2020, recordings were released of Mandelblit saying that the former State Attorney had him “by the throat” with the case that had not been closed and was in effect controlling him. Perhaps this is the explanation for Mandelblit's sudden change of attitude towards Netanyahu and his abandonment of the conservative principles he held before 2014.
MK Avigdor Liberman, former Minister of Defense was a vocal opponent of the use of the judicial concept of “reasonability” and of the judicial appointment process. Over the years, Liberman has been mentioned in many scandals, the most significant of which is the 2017 Yisrael Beyteinu scandal for which people close to him were incarcerated for many years. Though Liberman was central to the events he was never absolved of anything nor was he charged with anything, he did however stop speaking out against the judicial system.
All these cases are well known in the political circles where judicial reform was a universally supported idea until someone actually tried to do it. Unashamedly, the abuses continue today. The current Netanyahu coalition was in agreement that it was one of their priorities and Israel experienced the opposition from the judiciary that does not want to be reformed. In classic form, the judiciary even barred Netanyahu from talking about the reform while they skewered him.
In our first article, we mentioned the arrest of Commander Avishai Muallem, the head of the Judea and Samaria Police District’s Investigations and Intelligence Department. Officially, Muallem did not cooperate with the Shin Bet (The Israel Security Agency) in arresting Jews. This week, a recording of the commander of the Jewish Department of the Shin Bet was released in which he tells Muallem to arrest people without any evidence and put them in rat-infested detention cells because the Shin Bet wants to arrest as many as possible because, as far as the Shin Bet is concerned, they are not human beings. They refers to the Jews living in Judea and Samaria.
This shocking recording blew the top off the arrest of Muallem, exposing the institutionalized criminality of the Shin Bet, operating against the elected government, against the law and against the people of Israel. They are not operating in a vacuum. Widespread arrests of Jews without any evidence and without any reason, holding them just because the Shin Bet hates them and wants to broadcast to the public and the world that there is Jewish terrorism, though it does not exist or is negligible requires judicial and media accomplices.
Arresting the head of the Judea and Samaria Police District’s Investigations and Intelligence Department for refusing to cooperate with them, requires a brazen belief that there is a power “above the law”. To clarify, the use of criminal investigations, indictments and arrests must involve the Shin Bet, the Attorney General's Office and the judges who act as the Shin Bet’s rubber stamp, without any investigation or proper court procedures.
All the players of the deep state, all the actors who are needed in order to rule, are involved.
The so-called “Qatargate” cases in which Prime Minister Netanyahu's advisers are being investigated today, and which we will detail another time, also raise difficult questions of reality, legality and their intended purpose. Prime Minister Netanyahu detailed last week all the cases in which he, his family members and associates have been investigated over the years, how all the cases were blown up in the media and ended up fizzling out and disappearing. When you understand how the deep state works, then you have to wonder about each and every investigation and what is behind it.