`The lines between good and evil have blurred'
By Moshe Gorali
Haaretz, March 31, 2004
"I wrote the book out of great emotional turmoil," says Moshe Negbi, the legal commentator of the Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA). "Out of fear of this concentration of trampling the law and the terrible cheapening of human life. And what I find most frightening is that I'm not the only one who is afraid. There is a feeling that the legal authorities are also afraid and impotent, they don't want to fight the causes of this brutalization. Those who are supposed to stop the wave are turning into a part of it."
Negbi's new book, "Ki'Sdom Hayinu" (We Were Like Sodom), subtitled: "On the slope from a law-abiding country to a banana republic," (Keter Publishing House, in Hebrew), will be published in the coming days.
The terrified Negbi has written a terrifying book. As "an obsessive collector of newspapers," as he puts it, he has collected in the book all the bad things that he has read, and about which he has commented, in the past decade: government corruption, the rise in organized crime, racism toward Arabs, the forgiving attitude toward rabbis who incite, violence in the family, violence in the army.
For Negbi, the red line was crossed when retired Supreme Court Justice Zvi Tal was investigated. The president who was investigated (Ezer Weizman), and two prime ministers who are being investigated as suspects (former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and incumbent Prime Minister Ariel Sharon), are only additional milestones on the slippery slope. "One doesn't turn into a banana republic overnight," he says. "But we are definitely headed in that direction."
He levels his sharpest criticism at the enforcement authorities, focusing on recently retired attorney general Elyakim Rubinstein. "He's a good guy, in the bad sense of the word," says Negbi, "not corrupt but corrupting. A decent and pleasant person who was lethal for the job, whose decisions afforded legitimacy to corruption. Not in order to placate someone politically, simply out of the goodness of his heart. Rubinstein criticized the over zealousness of [police] Major General Moshe Mizrahi. And I am saying this as someone who suffers from being too soft. I praise Mizrahi's over zealousness.
"And where was Rubinstein overly zealous? In the investigation of [Leora] Glatt-Berkowitz [the prosecutor who leaked the fact that Sharon was being investigated in the Cyril Kern affair - M.G.]. And here he didn't come with clean hands, because he was personally harmed by the leak. As attorney general he is the one who was obligated to inform the public about the investigation of a prime minister, particularly before elections. By what right did he conceal it?"
Rubinstein began his term as attorney general in 1997, after the affair most identified with corruption of the civil service, the Bar-On Hebron affair, which primarily involved the appointment of an attorney general who was put forward in the interests of someone suspected of criminal wrongdoing. Negbi quotes a senior prosecutor, who after the fact regretted that the affair was exposed, and said that "until that happened, we could assume and hope that criminals are afraid of exposure and identification, and that perhaps this fear would stop them; now - when they have been exposed and identified, and nothing happened to them, neither in criminal terms nor on public and social terms - even this small amount of fear has disappeared." Rubinstein himself chose not to respond.
In Negbi's opinion, this disappearance of fear, and even more, the disappearance of shame constitute the greatest danger, and he thinks that the Likud Central Committee is the embodiment of the process. "When the targets of intelligence probes openly trade in Knesset seats," he says, "that's the greatest danger. These people choose the state comptroller and the judges. And as usual, what do we deal with? With petty matters. With MK Naomi Blumenthal [a former Likud deputy minister who was involved in election corruption] who is the small change under the street lamp. That's not the real threat."
Democracy is dying of fear
Negbi does not spare the courts, and doesn't hesitate to use the term "the brutalization of the courts." Following are sections of the indictment, the defense attorney's speech: "The value of life is less important than materialistic values. Etti Alon [convicted of embezzlement from a bank] got 16 years in prison; when has a rapist received such a punishment? We tend here to elevate judges and to dwarf politicians, and here it was the politicians-legislators who determined a moral and correct scale for punishment of crimes against life, body and soul, whereas in the courts you find an opposite scale.
"[Recently retired Supreme Court Justice] Dorner excelled in the wholesale release of murderers and people guilty of major violence. Restraining orders are not worth the paper on which they are written, and the judges, by issuing such orders, are in effect allowing women to be killed. Justice Shamgar spoke of the rights of the victim and about defective plea bargains. Suddenly I read that everyone is pressuring for plea bargains. I understand pressure to conclude civil cases, but criminals must be punished with the full force of the law."
Negbi's five heroes are justices Meir Shamgar, Aharon Barak, Yitzhak Zamir, Dorit Beinish and Mishael Cheshin, whom he sees as models of strict and proper law enforcement. Negbi was Cheshin's intern for two years, when Cheshin served as the director of Supreme Court appeals and deputy attorney general, in the mid-Seventies.
Negbi's writing excels in harsh, merciless rhetoric. He chooses particularly penetrating words and often uses the description "malignant." "Malignant forgiveness," "a terrible and malignant message," "malignant and infuriating foot-dragging." The description "Mafioso" is common, and faithfully accompanies the deeds of former head of Shas Aryeh Deri, and his ilk. He is a fan of emphasis through use of two words with the same root: "the shameful practice which also causes shame," "lawless mercy that brings about lawlessness," "the most corrupt and corrupting politician in the history of the state" (in his opinion Deri, of course). Even the names of the chapters hit one over the head: "A perfect murder, which was worth carrying out - the rule of law and democracy are dying of fright," is the title of the eighth chapter, which deals with the murder of former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.
"That's how I've always written," says Negbi. "One shouldn't prettify reality. If you don't speak at high volume, you won't be heard. It's ringing the alarm bell. The rabbis who are responsible for the murder of Rabin are still walking around free, and they are more dangerous bombs than [assassinated Hamas leader] Sheik Yassin. The failure to deal with them broadcasts a malignant weakness. The truth must be told, just as a cancer patient must be told the truth. The rule of law and democracy is in a terminal state here, and the way to a cure is to admit that there is a disease."
Is there a cure at all?
Not really, he says. "Maybe on the personal level: If other people, with a different way of thinking, head the system. I will be very happy if [recently appointed Attorney General] Meni Mazuz reads the book."
At present, commentator Negbi is calling on Mazuz, on his radio programs, to give decisive weight to the state prosecutor's recommendation to indict Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. He has a recommendation regarding the appointment of the state prosecutor as well: "It's important that it be a person who is overly zealous. The tools for punishing criminals exist. Someone has to use them. A person like Mordechai Kremnitzer. I would be happy to see Miriam Naor as attorney general. Everyone is making a fuss about the harsh expressions attributed to her in the ruling against Aryeh Deri in the district court. It's good that things were put like that. If a person has done a despicable thing, that should be written."
From prison to center stage
Negbi can be categorized as a zealot, a man of black and white, a fire and brimstone preacher. As such, he is a determined opponent of plea bargains and compromises. "One can't build a country on rotten foundations," he declares. "I'm not willing to whitewash, not for the sake of security and not for the sake of peace. Deeds do not justify all means. One can make political compromises, but not ethical compromises."
He is almost always strongly opposed to letting people off, to the point where one gets the impression that he thinks the only job of the courts is to convict. Negbi denies this: "I'm in favor of letting people off if the facts have not been proved, but I'm opposed to doing so when the reasonable doubt touches on the emotional basis. I don't accept the forgiving attitude of the judges toward public figures, especially those who claim that they weren't aware that the money went into their bank accounts. Do you think they would accept the argument of Buzaglo [an Israeli Sephardi John Doe] that he thought the white substance found in his car was sugar?"
Among those responsible for the deterioration Negbi includes the media, which he says are becoming increasingly corrupt. In the past, he says, the media knew how to distinguish between the good guys and the bad guys: "Barak [now Supreme Court president] as attorney general, and Shamgar in the Supreme Court in the 1980s, couldn't have cleaned the stables in cases of government corruption, without the backing of a supportive media, which saw the attorney general as a hero, and the corrupt people as villains. That the right order." Today, he says, the media distort the proper order, and worse. "Criminals even become cultural heroes here. Sarah Angel writes and is interviewed everywhere. Interviewers run after Ze'ev Rosenstein. Rahamim Oshri, who murdered two men, appears as a commentator on Supernews. The lines between good and evil have become blurred. That's part of the same cynical brutalization. There's no more shame. Deri returns from prison to center stage, popular and strengthened."
Negbi prefers to express himself cautiously about mass-circulation daily Maariv. He knows that every word of his will be examined with the magnifying glass of attorney Dan Avi-Yitzhak. But he has decided not to ignore the newspaper that fired him. "At least one newspaper is controlled by a family with members who have been convicted of criminal behavior, and there is presumably a chance that the newspaper will be used to settle accounts with the system that confronted them."
He believes that there is legitimacy to the view of some Maariv employees, who believe that the lesson to be learned from the Nimrodi affairs [the Nimrodis are the owners of Maariv] is that support of the rights of suspects vis a vis the establishment should be strengthened, "but the moment that it is directed by someone who has a personal account to settle, even a legitimate message is less effective."
One of the brilliant ideas in the book is the photograph on the cover: an orange, half of which has a healthy orange color, with the other half green and moldy. When it comes to oranges, the process is one way, and there is no possibility for the healthy part to overcome the diseased part. We must hope that in human society, the rot can be stopped. Negbi, it seems, believes that we are closer to the situation of the orange, which is even worse than the situation of Sodom, which is mentioned in the title of the book. Sodom, at least, had a chance of being saved.
