Channel 12 Investigation: Zini Aligns with Netanyahu
Shin Bet head David Zini's request to investigate a media leak mirrors Prime Minister Netanyahu's attempts to use state procedures for personal gain. Both share a clear hostility toward independent media.
1. What is behind Zini's request to investigate the media
The request of Shin Bet head David Zini to the Attorney General to investigate the alleged leak to Channel 12 on the day the attack on Iran began is similar in essence to the pardon request submitted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to President Isaac Herzog. Both mobilize legitimate procedures such as investigation and pardon for clearly foreign and improper purposes. Netanyahu is essentially asking to cancel his trial, and Zini is asking for silencing, deterrence, and intimidation toward the media, which he is accustomed to calling, according to a report in Haaretz, "disinformation" and "channels of poison and panic."
Zini is aligning himself here with Netanyahu: both in the attempt to promote an undemocratic procedure under the guise of apparent legitimacy, and in addition, he shares with Netanyahu the burning resentment toward independent and critical media that is not government propaganda. Meanwhile, the Attorney General did not approve opening an investigation against journalists and editors of Channel 12, since it involves thousands of people with security clearance, no damage was caused, and this is not the case to harm the media. And also, because of the possibility that Yonit Levi and Nir Dvori were not prepared to be caught unprepared like the government and the IDF on October 7. The buzz around an attack in Iran was in the air, and it is good to know that there are those who knew how to prepare for it.
2. What the people want and what they need
The government warned the Supreme Court last Wednesday not to dare to order it to establish a state commission of inquiry into the massacre failure and the events that preceded it and occurred in its aftermath. And before the threat, an expression of regret. "Unfortunately," it was written in the appeal, "due to the constraints of the Knesset's schedule, the Knesset was unable to complete the legislative procedures of the bill in the second and third readings before leaving for the election recess."
Indeed, the workload is unbearable. To eliminate the institution of the Attorney General, to weaken the independent media, to pamper the ultra-Orthodox by canceling the arrest of deserters, by subsidizing in circumvention of sanctions for draft dodgers, by a Basic Law on Torah study. True, it is important to destroy another important institution in Israeli democracy, the state commission of inquiry, but hey, how much can one demand and expect. As it is said in Pirkei Avot: "It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it."
No commission suits Netanyahu right now. Therefore, he removed from the agenda the bill of MK Ariel Kallner for a political commission of inquiry. It suits him to leave on the agenda, especially during the election period, the discussion against the fitness of Supreme Court President Isaac Amit to establish such a commission. And why does Netanyahu not have trust in a commission that Amit will establish? Because such a commission will "tilt" its conclusions against him as did, in his view, the last two commissions established by the change government - the commission of inquiry into the Meron disaster, which found him personally responsible for the death of 45 worshippers, and the submarine commission, which issued warning letters against him regarding harm to the security of the State of Israel, its foreign relations, and its economy.
The government warns the Supreme Court against a ruling that could influence politically during the election period. In doing so, it hits the opinion of some judges who prefer that the public decide at the ballot box if and which commission it wants. And Judge Stein raised another difficulty - I do not know how to formulate the mandate and boundaries of the investigation for the commission. Around two issues there is a majority in the Israeli public - equality in the burden and the establishment of a state commission of inquiry. The government is fighting against both with great fury. Through extensive legislation in favor of draft dodgers and through zero action regarding the investigation of the greatest disaster and failure in the country's history. The system of government allows the government to use its parliamentary majority against the will of the majority of the people. Ben-Gurion justified this situation with the famous sentence attributed to him: "It is not important what the people want, it is important what the people need." Netanyahu took it one step further: "It is not important what the people want and it is also not important what the people need."
3. Resting not in seven mistakes, but in seventy
Former Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel declared to the Supreme Court that members of the New Hope faction, and she among them, were required to document their vote in favor of the Prime Minister's personal lawyer, Adv. Michael Ravilo, for State Comptroller. And not just to document on video but "to present the documentation to the Prime Minister," as Haskel writes in the affidavit. These things contradict the Likud's response to the Supreme Court that no such order was given, and whoever did so acted on their own initiative. It is clear that one of the affidavits is false.
The Supreme Court has no way to decide who is lying and must settle for the sad fact that one of the two is not telling the truth. The judges had enough evidence to be convinced that the secrecy of the elections was violated. But they chose the more moderate remedy - holding repeat elections - and not the more extreme one, appointing the competing candidate, retired Supreme Court Judge Yosef Elron. By the way, even the ruling for repeat elections elicited calls for insubordination and a constitutional crisis from the government and the Knesset. Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana has not yet announced if and when these elections will take place. The innovation in Haskel's affidavit is not in the actual obligation of documentation but in the obligation of presenting it to Netanyahu. This situation itself is first of all a comic grotesque: the elected officials of the people are presented in it as wild children whom the boss does not trust when he lands an illegal instruction on them - to deny their conscience and the instruction of the law. And all this in order to choose his personal lawyer. Resting not in seven mistakes, but in seventy.
