Yoav Baram – Bibi’s Crossing (Or: how to obstruct justice in a totally legal way)
In the past couple of weeks people in Israel are witnessing a fascinating phenomena. An unprecedented attempt by the prime minister and his close minions to save him from an expected indictment in at least one of the two ongoing criminal investigations against him. Sure, at the rate things are going its hard to see any actual indictment anytime before 2029*, but still – the piling of state witnesses and investigative materials trouble Netanyahu and his band of Umpa-Lumpa’s, and they are running around like the bad guys on an “Austin Powers” movie – trying to please Dr. Evil at all cost, knowing that their fate is inevitably entwined with his ability to build a ‘giant laser’ on the moon and eliminating all the mounting evidence against him. They know that there is no ‘Likud’ party without Bibi, and without Bibi – the ‘Likud’ is in shambles, even more so than what the ‘Avoda’ party was under that guy that no one can even remember his name, only the fact that he had a squeaky voice.
The media outlets turmoil in Israel this week surrounded 2 ‘problematic’ law propositions by the ruling party – the ‘Likud’ : one discusses making a serving prime minister immune to police investigations – dubbed – not surprisingly as so many other things that suck and include the word ‘French’ in them – “the Frech law”. The second discusses the police’s authority to whether or not recommend (to the attorney general) to prosecute at the end of an investigation.
The first proposition met a lot of resistance even inside the usually ‘house broken’ coalition, both “Habait hayehudi” party and “Kulanu” party objected to the proposition and insisted on inserting a special paragraph that will limit the prime minister’s term to 2 (more on that later). Of course both propositions were not supposed to apply to Netanyau, but no one is innocent enough to think that Bibi’s guard dogs – David Bitan (the coalitions infamous whip) and David Amsalem (promoter of the law, and Bibi’s new pet dog ever since Yuval Steinitz ran away without trace) are pushing for this without somehow applying it to Don Bibi.
It’s now apparent to pretty much everyone that “the French law” was nothing but a silly distraction – meant to easily slip the other law – the one that will eliminate the police’s authority to file recommendations – through the back door. The idea is of course ludicrous, you can’t expect the police to hand over a huge case, loaded with thousands of documents, testimonials and depositions to the attorneys office without bothering to mention at the end whether or not they think they have a case in court. It’s a bit like if taking your 71 Ford Pinto to a periodic inspection and receive at the end a file weighing 15 pounds and containing 1400 pages detailing all the mechanical issues and their cost, without have them summarized by someone who’ll actually tell you how bad the problem is and whether or not you should drive it (hint: you really shouldn’t).
If you look at it from the investigators point of view, its like hiring a film critic that will watch the movie without ever writing a review, and no one wants to see a Sean Penn movie and not being able to rip on it at the end (or watch a Sean Penn movie period).
Don Bibi and Boss Bitan knew that they had no chance of passing the law that will give the prime minister immunity at such a sensitive time, you know – with all the endless investigations going around, so they concocted before hand what they knew the coalition could live with – the law that involves the police recommendations. All while creating a ‘fake’ crisis in the coalition – threatening the other coalition members to vote for the proposition or go to general elections – as if Bibi and his mob organization have the mandate to go to poles. When you think about it its a pretty basic move, written on the third page of every “Negotiations for dummies” book: always ask for what you know you won’t get – just so you could get what you actually want (or was that from Sun Tzu ‘Art of war’? whatever you know what I mean).
The ‘Likud’ cartel is working very hard since the ‘Kneset’ winter sit opened 2 weeks ago, not for his constituents of course, or for the rest of the citizens of Israel – after all they are nothing but ‘pickles‘ and are not really part of the country, no – the ‘Likud” is working hard on weakening the Israeli constitutional gatekeepers, and trying to avoid – at all cost – the day that Netanyahu will be subjected to an indictment. As far as the latter goes it has a name in criminal law – its called obstructing of justice. It might all be legal of course, but its obstruction none the less – all for maintaining Netanyahu’s endless rule, the one that’s already smelling like a rotting democracy in the trunk of a 71 Ford Pinto.
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And we now move to our counter:
It’s been 354 days in which the prime minister did not condemn the corruption in the submarines investigation i.e case 3000 (in which he is not involved to this moment).
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*Meanwhile in America….
It took Robert Mueller – head of the Special Counsel investigation of Russian interference in the U.S elections 5 months to indict 3 people who were working on the Trump campaign (it should be mentioned that only one faced charges directly linked to the investigation). Despite all of Trumps attempts to sabotage and delay the ongoing investigation – including firing FBI director James Comey – Trump will have a very hard time stopping Mueller, because among other things – the U.S has a strong system of constitutional checks and balances that can’t be easily dismantled (Trump can’t even fire Mueller unless he can somehow proof misconduct or conflict of interest). In the U.S Trump is having a hard time passing laws even while the GOP holds the house majority, in Israel on the other hand it’s enough to have an aggressive and dominating party that anchors the obligation to vote on legislative issues as it sees fit, punishing disobedient coalition members and threaten them with sanctions (for example: refusal to pass on the legislation of other party’s in the coalition). In the U.S the presidency is limited to 2 terms, in Israel we can only dream on 2 terms and it’s apparent to everyone that such a limitation could only pass if Bibi finds something to gain from it (Bibi will pass Ben Gurion’s historic record for most days in office in just short of 10 months).
It took Mueller 5 months to indict from the day he started his investigation, in Israel it took the states attorney (Shai Nitzan) and the states legal counsel (Avichai Mandelblit) 3 months before they even decided to open a criminal investigation in the submarines corruption affair, dubbed case 3000 (after it was published by investigative journalist Raviv Drucker). The Israeli police is investigating case 1000 and 2000 in which Netanyahu is involved for nearly 10 months since they were revealed back in January. And this is just the beginning, after the police investigation will be over it will hand over the cases to the attorney general which will probably review them for a few more months (or in some cases years) before handing them over to the states legal counsel (the one Bibi appointed) who’m in turn will have to decide – very slowly and without time limitations of course – whether or not to press charges. Make no mistake, I’m not celebrating America here – after all it is being run by a very retarded version of Bibi – But – at least Americans could find some solemn in the fact that even someone who is – by all accounts such an overwhelmingly stupid idiot – can’t and won’t be able to cause one tenth of the damage he could have actually caused…Maybe if he had David Bitan….
