The chief justice of the Israeli Supreme Court, Esther Hayut, heard from a fellow judge, Hila Gerstel, that Bibi crony, Nir Hefetz, had offered her a bribe. Gerstel approached Hayut after the bribery attempt (the former was offered the job of attorney general if she would drop charges against Sara Netanyahu) and neither one ever breathed a word of it to the Israeli police. At the time, Hayut sat as a lower court judge. Later, she was elevated to chief justice of Israel’s highest court.
The police later learned about Heifetz’s efforts via an independent source and asked both judges to answer their questions. Why did they wait nearly three years to speak and then only when forced to do so? Knowing Hefetz approached her as an emissary of the prime minister, why was she so intimidated that she kept her mouth shut? And what sort of judges does Israel have who are cowed in the face of such institutional power?
A few rare voices have demanded Hayut’s resignation as a result of her malfeasance. But they are viewed as left-wing outliers and not given serious attention in the Israeli mainstream. Israel is so inured to corruption at every level of society (thanks in part the Bibi-swamp of serial scandals) that the behavior of these judges hardly merits further outrage.
I have reported here on a number of outrageous rulings by this Court, which was once (many years ago) considered the crown of Israeli democracy. Now it is the tail wagged by the corrupt Israeli dog. It doesn’t lead in championing human or civil rights. It follows the lead of its dirty patrons in the Knesset and prime minister’s office.
Another bitter irony revealed itself yesterday, when a foolish lawyer for the Israeli securities commission investigating the Bezeq scandal, placed his cell phone on his lap with its text screen displaying prominently messages he was exchanging with the judge in the case. They were colluding about the length of detention of the various suspects charged in the case. Imagine, they were smart enough to conduct an encrypted conversation on WhatsApp, but stupid enough to be doing so in a public courtroom. An alert cameraman for Channel 10 took pictures of his screen displaying the messages and, before you know it, the story was splashed across TV screens throughout Israel. As a result, the lawyer “went on vacation” and the judge was removed from the case.
What happened next is the icing on the cake. Who oversees the disgraced judge? Why, the chief justice of course. So Esther Hayut, chief ‘ethics enforcer’ for the Israeli judiciary, announces an investigation of the judge’s actions. What she fails to do is announce an investigation of her own far more damaging ethical turpitude.
The compromise of the Israeli judiciary is only one aspect of the rot in the entire system. The political process is shot through with greed and corruption. The army and intelligence services are riddled with sexual violence, financial chicanery, and genocidal boasts. These are the leading institutions of Israeli society. And the fish always stinks from the head.
I find it amazing that Netanyahu hasn’t resigned yet, but then he is the great insider of Right-wing Israeli politics – he will go down like Captain Ahab, lashed to the White Whale of his crimes, thinking “L’état, c’est Moi” as he hits the bottom of the Mediterranean.
Both America and Israel need separate dialogues between the leadership and the people on how corrupt the bureaucracy has gotten – both countries are stumbling towards revolution, and I think it might be a revolt of the extreme Right and not the Left in America.