A Chosen People? Shifting the Perspective from Guilt to Responsibility (Column 283)

You wrote:

“He hysterically explains to all of us that a government with the Joint List is a disaster and the end of Zionism (which in my view is utter nonsense)”

Why do you think that is nonsense? Could you elaborate a bit?

The idea that one can move to a discourse that knows how to criticize your own side has passed from the world. For decades now, the Left in Israel has attacked us personally and not substantively; thank God, at long last we have public representatives who fight back tooth and nail. When the Left starts playing fair, we can join the new rules of the game, but as long as it plays by the rules it set, we have no choice but to play the game.
Those in the know (Haim Ramon, whom I regard as an honest man—relatively speaking for politicians) argue that all the arguments of Blue and White against Netanyahu are one big hypocrisy, and the proof is that in his view Liberman and Ehud Barak are the greatest corrupt figures in Israel, yet nothing was alleged against them—not regarding cases and not regarding corruption. Why then should we complain about a prime minister accused of trying to obtain favorable coverage (which every politician tries to do)?
I would be glad to know why, in your view, Asa Kasher is unworthy of being a preacher at the gate?

I tend to trust the “wisdom of the masses.” 58 seats (as opposed to 62, and if you insist, also minus the 15 Arabs) that support a man after three indictments have been filed against him, versus an unelected judicial junta headed by the well-known dictators, lead one to understand that the public does not accept the fact of his conviction. (And I did not vote for the right-wing bloc.)
This parallels the Talmudic rule that the validity of a decree depends on whether “the public can abide by it,” especially in a democracy whose very definition is “rule of the people.”

The justification for responsibility without guilt, given in column 67, is a practical-utilitarian justification: “If we do not impose responsibility on the individual citizen, we will not be able to prevent atrocities done by his power and through him.” Such a rationale can, as usual, ground punishment (as at Nuremberg) on the part of the punisher who has weighed the alternatives (what will happen in the future if I impose punishment on all individuals, and what will happen if I do not impose it. In other words: if they fear whips and therefore refrain, then I will chastise them with scorpions so that they will not refrain. In the hope that if they all act together, they will be spared both the whips and the scorpions). If I understand correctly, the claim here is that such a utilitarian rationale can also ground a categorical moral imperative (morality itself weighs the alternatives and decides to declare such a categorical imperative, and from then on the individual is subject to that imperative even though, in and of itself, there is no reason for him to act. And here it was further renewed that even if the individual sees with his own eyes that the other individuals are not acting—“the other side adopts a similar position”—the imperative still applies to him) and therefore demands action. It is of course understood that attaching the adjective “responsibility” without there being any demand for action has practical significance only for red marks in the books of heaven and is irrelevant to anything whatsoever.

With God’s help, Saturday night after Shushan Purim 5780

In explaining Zeresh’s words, “If Mordecai, before whom you have begun to fall, is of the seed of the Jews, you will not prevail against him, but will surely fall before him,” the Sages say in tractate Megillah that Israel is compared to stars and is compared to dust. In their ascent—they rise to the heavens; and in their descent—they may, Heaven forbid, fall to the dust.

Chosenness is a capacity, a potential. Jews have unique spiritual powers that, when properly realized, can bring them to the very best; and conversely, when not properly realized, can drag them down to the very worst corruptions. Thus from this same people of Israel came both righteous, pious geniuses who excelled in wisdom and good deeds, and on the other hand apostates, kapos, and members of the Yevsektsiya who harmed their own people and persecuted them cruelly.

The Maharal of Prague discusses (in the opening chapters of Netzach Yisrael) the question of how it came to be that the people of Israel, the chosen people, failed throughout history in the gravest sins. He answers (similarly to the physical law that Newton would formulate in the following generation) that when a powerful force operates in one direction, there also operates against it an “opposing force” pushing in the opposite direction.

And so, opposite Israel’s special quality and the Torah that powerfully draws it toward faith and toward the good—there intensifies, with equal force, the opposite power pulling toward evil and toward casting off the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven. And this is naturally understandable, since man by nature aspires to freedom, rest, and enjoyment of life, and when the Torah places upon him the heavy yoke of the 613 commandments—some of which require effort and subduing the inclination, and at times his faith places him in a constant conflict against “the whole world and his wife”—then just as a Jew has a great desire to rise higher, so too the opposite desire grows strong within him, the desire to cast off the yoke.

Therefore the special quality does not always bring the Jew to the height of ascent, and sometimes his present reality displays a powerful decline. But even in that state we do not lose faith and hope that “the measure of good is greater” will restore us to our strength and bring about the triumph of the inner good over the shells of evil that have clung to us.

With blessings, Shatz

I don’t see anything immoral in voting for the Likud or for Mr. Benjamin.
(Right now Mr. Benjamin is the head of the Likud whether we like it or not)… Let’s assume the person really did all the things attributed to him. My question as a voter is whether there is currently an alternative, or whether I think that politically and diplomatically his general line is better than the others’. Personally I do not want a Gantz government that leans left (quite apart from the fact that they are a very mixed party and zigzag between right and left), I do not want the Joint List for obvious reasons, and I do not want a party with a half-messianic and unclear vision like the Jewish Home; likewise I do not want a messianic party from the school of Har Hamor like Noam. So as a voter my alternative is the Likud—Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu is currently the chairman of the Likud, and therefore it comes as a package deal. Those who, in my view, need to take responsibility for the immunity that fellow gets are the people of “Bibi is king!!!!!!!” who raised him to greatness, not me.

Israeli society is very far from being “a light unto the nations” (even if we assume that society here really ought to be such a thing—and I dispute that assumption; Israel was founded as a secular state, not as a messianic federation for repairing the world, and as such it has no religious-moral obligation toward the world other than complying with international agreements).

But as I already noted, as a society we do not really rise above the basic moral standard of the average American, Norwegian, or Dutchman—there is crime here as everywhere, a culture of stupidity and ignorance as everywhere (let’s admit the truth, the intelligence level of the youth in this country is not very high).

That is bad regardless of what the gentiles will say (to whom, as I said, I personally owe nothing), but simply because of the basic desire that I want my children to grow up in a place where the cultural-intellectual level of street conversation is higher than it is today.

Shatz,
Please,
If you want to respond to my comment, don’t begin a dance of quotations for me about the Ben-Gurionist desire to serve as a light unto the nations, nor about seeing the state as a source of blessing to all the nations of the world in the conception of Rav Kook and his son Rav Tzvi Yehuda.

As for our current situation—even the “actual” is not nearly as bad as all that. We are the only nation in the world in a state of existential threat, with enemies who literally seek to destroy us. This situation is one of the reasons for the polarization in our society. On the right, people fear a terror state that might threaten our existence in cooperation with Iran and the like, and they demand a forceful policy. On the left, by contrast, people think that only peace with our neighbors will save us from this existential threat, and therefore they are willing to make sweeping concessions in a desperate effort to bring about a peace agreement.

Another thing that contributes to polarization is the seriousness with which each of us regards the values in which he believes. One is anxious for his religious values, while another is anxious for his liberal values and fears “religionization” like fire. One places national values at the top, and another universalism. One puts family values at the center, while another sees as the foundation of everything each person’s absolute right to realize his will with no regard whatsoever for tradition. And since each one sees the values he believes in as a “supreme value,” the arguments rise to a high pitch.

But here too we are reassured by the fact that the great intensity of the political and value-based disputes is mainly in words. In practice we all sit together, work together, and cooperate, both in the army and in the institutions that govern the state. We quarrel loudly, but when we reach the “snack bar” we come to understandings and agreements. There is almost no family in Israel in which the whole spectrum is not represented—right-wingers and left-wingers, Haredim, religious Zionists, traditionalists, and secular people—who maintain relations of friendship and fraternity despite the harsh arguments.

So it is worth calming down: much as we are “a people scattered and divided,” we have not ceased to be “one people” as well.

With blessings, Shatz

The truth is that this whole discussion is one big exercise in self-righteousness from beginning to end. The discussion and argument are not only political but a matter of trust. In the end, most of the Jewish people living in the land trust Bibi more than they trust the State Attorney’s Office, and to tell the truth that’s a good thing. We can’t do without our legal system, but it is a necessary evil. Because what matters is the rule of justice, not the rule of law. The fact that the rabbi ignores concepts like “people,” “justice,” and “argument” (or perhaps we should say, distrust on the verge of war) and flees to concepts like “citizens,” “law,” and “discourse” is part of the same problem as the State Attorney’s Office and the courts—self-righteousness, self-righteousness, self-righteousness. Self-righteousness that is the partner of evil. “Purifying the discourse” is a term for the way the Left wants to brainwash the Right. The argument will be conducted however we dictate it to you. A lawyers’ practice of winning the discussion by determining the questions. I simply think that the Left (and to tell the truth, the rabbi too, sadly) just do not grasp that they are not such upright people as they think they are. They live in a classic lack of self-awareness and will therefore go on whining until the end of all generations.

Bibi should not resign because the majority of the people chose him, and if he does that he will in a sense betray their trust. They do not want him to surrender. Indeed, Arabs sitting in the government is a kind of disaster, because it is a kind of recognition that this is not the state of the Jews. And that is truly the real war being fought between the two camps in the people: the state of the Jews or a state of all its citizens—which is the end of Zionism. Period. Bibi is only the symbol of the struggle. The Left wants to topple him not because of who he is but because he represents the Right. And the rabbi has simply been caught, like the rest of the “so-called intellectuals,” in this brainwashing (the rabbi simply hates him irrationally. Cigars. Family. Why not. Good thing he didn’t accuse him of the murder of Arlozorov). The Left magnifies the flaws of every person it does not favor to the level of a demon, and the rabbi too has been swept into that vortex, but personally I am not impressed by it. All human beings, apart from a few very special people (the true kabbalists), think only of their own good, even if they think they don’t. Anyone else in Bibi’s place would fight for his position and profession under attacks that are irrelevant to his functioning. That is simply human, nothing more. The only question is whether he is good at what he does (being prime minister) or not. That is the only discussion, and that’s it. Any claim about self-interest and hedonism is a diversion from the discussion and deceit.

All this talk too about an exemplary state, a chosen people, and a light unto the nations is self-righteousness. Indeed the people of Israel have an important role in the redemption of the world, but obviously that will not happen just automatically on its own. It exists only if one keeps the Torah of God, and the Torah of God is the Torah of Kabbalah (the inner dimension of the Torah), which is the “light that brings one back to the good” within the Torah. Only naïve people like the Left think one can defeat the evil inclination with pretty words. They’re living in a movie.

And for these reasons, by the way, the rabbi too is far from being a worthy preacher at the gate. That is a role fit only for prophets and special people (people who truly love the people as a father loves his children—the rabbi is a million miles from that), but nowadays they keep silent for good reasons. The rabbi has wisdom, but he is far from being righteous. He too is biased (we are talking about bribery, aren’t we?) no less than the other people dwelling in Zion, and therefore his words do not carry much weight.

By the way, I do not know why the rabbi thinks that specifically the Right are “puppets.” Precisely the fact that it does not surrender to the slogans of the media (“the shapers of public opinion”) proves a certain backbone. This is unlike many empty-headed, glazed-eyed leftists who repeat their friends’ mantras in order to be part of the “right” crowd. I think the Left is actually very foolish. As I said—lacking self-awareness. I believe that especially the shrill part among them contributes nothing to the people or to humanity. More harmful than helpful, and the Right should not fear parting ways with them as the Haredim do. Simply not speak to them at all and not be in any kind of interaction. Let them talk to themselves until they finally lose their minds completely.

With God’s help, 16 Adar 5780

To Ailon — greetings,

Regarding the claim of “puppets” who automatically receive the leader’s instructions—the distinction here is not between “right and left,” but between a party in which the representatives are elected democratically and therefore are not dependent on the party leader, as opposed to parties such as Yisrael Beiteinu and Blue and White, in which all the party’s representatives in the Knesset are appointed by the party leader(s) and therefore depend absolutely on the leader’s opinion.

With blessings, Shatz

As for R. M. D. A., it is not correct to say that he is not righteous, for he is careful to observe the details of halakhah. It would be more accurate to say that he is not a “hasid,” filled with love of Israel.

Because in my estimation nothing substantial will happen from such a coalition. What will they do? Change the national anthem and the flag? Turn it into a state of all its citizens? Fail to deal with terror from within or without? At most they’ll pass a budget for the Arab sector, as is customary.

Asaf, your words are an excellent illustration of the phenomenon I warned about. This discourse has not passed from the world, and there are people who are occasionally decent on both sides (Haim Ramon, exists?). The question is how long they will keep up this score-settling that leads nowhere.
As for Asa Kasher, I commented because I had to, but I see no point in going into details about him (everything is public. I have no inside information).

That is exactly what I was talking about. This “wisdom of the masses” can lead to all kinds of conclusions. There is no connection here to the wisdom of the masses, if only because the masses here are divided according to their political views (quite apart from the question whether the phenomenon of the wisdom of the masses is relevant in such cases at all). When the discourse is more reasonable and balanced, as I suggested, there may be more room for wisdom-of-the-masses arguments.
The decree that the public cannot abide by is not relevant here. There the masses are not required to be wise; rather, it is an indication of how relevant and suitable that decree is for them.

In my view this is not only a practical-utilitarian justification, but also a moral one. There is still room for the utilitarian consideration you presented (what if the other side does not cooperate). But one should take into account that sometimes the only way to change this is to do it yourself without cooperation. Especially when it is a conflict among ourselves and not between us and the Palestinians (where, if the other side does not cooperate, there is perhaps more room for the claim that we too are not supposed to take account and compromise). In the very end, collective responsibility is on all of us together, and if we get stuck because no one is willing to take the first step, we will all lose (see column 122 regarding the prisoner’s dilemma and the categorical imperative).

The question of being a light unto the nations interests me about as much as last year’s snow. For me, this is an expression of the fact that we are not conducting ourselves properly, entirely irrespective of the gentiles. You yourself say this too, so don’t drag the discussion there.

In my opinion there are many puppets and discourse-motivated people on all sides. These are Bibi’s puppets and those are Haaretz’s puppets. So what? By the way, I also share your assessment that the Right is much more intelligent in its conduct than the Left (it seems to me I already wrote that on the site).
But if publishing the column was enough to receive these eulogies about my personality, that is enough for me. 🙂

Why is the argument from the alternative not correct?
Can someone with absolutely no experience, who moreover looks like someone who does not know how to make decisions, run the country?
(Bibi, with all the claims against him, knows very well how to make decisions. He is afraid of decisions involving extreme changes, but within the given boundaries he functions well.)
Besides, prime minister is also a representative role. Will someone be able to handle it if Gantz comes abroad and confuses the names of heads of state?

(And as for the substance, it seems to me that there is a basic popular intuition here: we don’t care about a corrupt prime minister, as long as he is not really betraying the role, that’s fine. A prime minister is not a model figure, but a successful manager—just as in the past they would take gangsters as army commanders because they knew how to fight—Jephthah as an example—so too with a prime minister.)

Nothing will happen? Pardon me, one of the most bizarre columns. Within half a year they’ll dismantle the state. On the table (according to Ayman Odeh): repeal of the Law of Return and the Kaminitz Law, legalization of all the illegal construction in the Arab sector, prohibition of Jews ascending the Temple Mount, and more. To tell Netanyahu to resign—that’s demagoguery. Let’s tell the Jews to commit suicide and we’ve solved the problem of antisemitism. The argument about the accused is the classic argument of “Have you murdered and also inherited?” Let’s stitch together precedent-setting indictments against a man by Mafia methods—and then cluck our tongues over why he doesn’t resign? This is Sodom, right here. Can you see going into an operation in Gaza with the support of the Joint List? Honestly, hatred of the man blinds the eyes of the wise.

I also forgot the moral abomination—(not accepting champagne from friends) establishing a government with the support of terror supporters and those who praise shahids.

With God’s help, 16 Adar 5780

A coalition with the Joint List means they are partners in every diplomatic and security consideration of the government. Every response to terror by the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, or Islamic Jihad would require reporting to and approval from their supporters…

In horror, Shatz

Tony, you forgot gas chambers and death by torture for all the Jews. An alien attack and baby kidnappings. Rape of all women up to age 58 and death by starvation for everyone else.

As for the risk—what about support from the opposition (the Likud and the Jewish Home)? Apocalypse now. Friends, you are truly brainwashed in a way that is hard to describe. Puppets, as we already said?

For myself, I did indeed summarize the claim as a moral theory for solving the prisoner’s dilemma (by introducing a third factor—morality—as a coordinating mechanism between the sides). I am uncertain what is meant by the sentence “if we get stuck because no one is willing to take the first step, we will all lose”: if taking the first step is done in the hope that this will (in expected value terms—that is, with a reasonable probability relative to the cost of the action and the expected gain in the result) elicit parallel steps from the other side, then even a plain ordinary utilitarian moral theory (which I hold) is enough to ground a duty to act. If that is indeed the intention here, then why did we need the distinction between guilt and responsibility? [Perhaps I should go according to your method (with which I do not agree) that there is a mechanism for evaluating actions not solely by expected value, and therefore utilitarianism would not help here because the case is unique and exceptional?]. If both sides take the first step simultaneously (as in the prisoner’s dilemma), then indeed it is understandable that the categorical imperative is needed. [Personally I still do not accept this categorical imperative, and in my view there is no happy solution to the dilemma. Each of the prisoners will choose his dominant strategy and both will suffer together. That is what I would do as a prisoner and suffer in prison, and in my view that is morality itself, as pure as the heavens. Of course, if I could program people, I would program them to act according to that categorical imperative, and it is a great pity that one cannot recruit a third factor capable of weighing alternatives and punishing violations of categorical imperatives].

I have no doubt that those more brainwashed are the haters of Bibi rather than those who love him.
The media have been slandering him and his wife for over a decade precisely in order to create this assumption that the rabbi tosses out here; there’s no need to discuss it at all, since it is supposedly self-evident.
I doubt there was ever anyone in Israel whom the police and the State Attorney’s Office worked so hard to convict of something.
If after all that work what they found was these three miserable cases, I am calm.
Personally I went through all the material published on the subject; nothing there seemed criminal to me.
I don’t think a prime minister should be brought down over hedonism.

I am not at all sure there are any puppets on the Right. People simply are not willing for other people (who are unfit to lead them, to tell them what to do) to tell them what to think and what to do. He is fighting for his intellectual and behavioral independence. And the fact that the Left tries to impose its general policy (a state of all its citizens) by every means is in itself a kind of crime that must be fought even before we discuss sins of Bibi’s sort (and Bibi and corruption are only a means. Remember Sharon for good, whose sins—which were greater than Bibi’s—were wiped away the moment he decided to expel Jews. And he was openly “etrogized” by the various fighters for justice and integrity. The Left should not babble to us about morality and purity of conduct. They do not care a whit about that. They worship rules and laws, and justice does not interest them at all.) That is exactly what I mean by self-righteousness. There is a hierarchy in matters of justice. If the rabbi wishes, I would say that self-righteousness is being righteous in cents and wicked in dollars (on the model of “penny wise, pound foolish”). And in that sense, by the way, I have never (!) met an honest leftist (and a considerable part of my family are such people).

As long as the Right does not separate itself from the Left, it will not have the peace of mind necessary to make a decision on an issue like Bibi. As the rabbi has written more than once, intellectual autonomy precedes (technically, or even more than that) truth. In matters of justice and morality too, behavioral autonomy (that a person choose his actions by his own decision and choice, and not that others choose for him and force him by threats) precedes any other justice. What the Left (since the cradle of its birth—see communism) is trying to do is to take away the Right’s choice, and part of that choice is who its leaders will be. Their audacity is simply unbelievable. I only want to remind the rabbi (he did not write this anywhere, but it infuriated me and therefore I assume it also infuriated him, especially since it touches him personally) how much audacity the Haredim had in deciding for the representatives of religious Zionism whom to appoint as judges on its behalf and whom not to appoint (if they don’t like a judge identified with Tzohar, then let them not sit with him in judgment—but to dictate to others who their representative will be and who not is first-rate audacity and disrespect. It must be said that in such a case religious Zionism had no choice but to insist even more on a judge from Tzohar. And although acting out of spite is childish, this is one of those cases where perhaps one has no choice but to stand one’s ground. It is part of its independence, which precedes any other justice). Bibi’s case is exactly the same thing. If the Left doesn’t like it, let them leave the country or separate themselves from the Right. I am not afraid of that. The Holy One, blessed be He, will not be with them. And the fact that the rabbi joins some of this intellectual coercion (of the Left) is very bad in my eyes. Hence the eulogies (premature, I hope and believe).

Not many know this, but in fact Rabbi Michi is a Novardok moralist full of simple faith, and his entire purpose in the blog and his various publications is to humble himself and break the trait of pride by means of the labels “heretic” and “wicked” that will be cast upon him by simple God-fearing people…

Happy hangover day of democratiafkim

And to Shatz

Regarding the righteous person: that is exactly what I am talking about. Observing the commandments in all their details (at least as accepted in the public—i.e., 612 commandments without the non-religious commandment “Love your neighbor as yourself”) is not enough to turn a person into a good human being (righteous—or perhaps we should say, of quality). One who does not love all of Israel is not a good human being (which makes 99.9% of the people of Israel—including me of course—not good people. But it is not anyone’s fault. One is simply not born that way, and it is something that must be learned). Love of Israel comes only with the study of Kabbalah (and I won’t go into that now; I will only say that without Kabbalah this commandment is a self-righteous commandment. Kabbalah turns it, in a certain sense, into almost the most important commandment in the Torah—on the same level as the commandment of knowing God, “Know the God of your father and serve Him”). These two commandments are two sides of the same coin). What is true is that the people of Israel have the greatest readiness for this reality of love of the collective (and its particulars by virtue of this) more than the other nations. That is the unique quality of the people. Therefore only it is commanded in this commandment (just as in the rest of the Torah, which is the particulars of the commandment of love of Israel).

After all, the rabbi too would say that the public that keeps Torah and commandments is not an example of a chosen people and a light unto the nations (perhaps in relation to the other nations, yes, but that is not enough).

That is exactly what I am saying. And it’s not just over a decade. It’s from the day he beat Peres in the 1996 election. And in general, by their lights Begin was a murderer, so Bibi is in a much better situation. Peres could learn from the media what tireless subversion looks like.

This may be worth a column, and this is not the place.
Here I’ll just say briefly that I am speaking about a situation in which our action has some chance of succeeding, but not enough on its own to obligate me to act and to place guilt on me if I do not act. But considerations of responsibility do obligate me to act and to arrive at the optimal result of the prisoner’s dilemma, and if I do not act there is a claim of responsibility against me even if not one of guilt.

Interesting! [I am inclined to guess that one also needs the assumption of the metaphysical existence of the collective. By the way, a difficulty for me in reading the minds of broad-ranging thinkers is that they hold opinions on different subjects, and from their point of view there is no defect at all in building the palace of one of their opinions above the ceiling of another of their opinions, just as mathematicians have no such problem].

I do not know why the rabbi thinks that special budgets for the Arab sector are something acceptable. After all, all the injustice of the Haredim in these matters (budgets and control) pales in comparison to that of the Arabs. The Arabs may not impose their control on the Jews (religiously), but morally they (as a society) are beneath all criticism. It cannot even be said that they are corrupt. They are beneath that—on the border of barbarism. They evade taxes on a huge scale (much more than the Haredim, I would cautiously assume). They receive balancing grants for local authorities where they barely collect municipal taxes because of corruption. They receive a significant share of the National Insurance budget, far more than their share in the population (and I do not even know why they belong to that insurance at all. They are not part of the nation. And the rabbi should not claim that this is civil insurance. Why should there be such a thing at all? I do not want to insure them in the first place. Neither their payments nor their allowances. I want to take care of Jews. Would the Arabs take care of me? Not only that, they are not even willing to draft them into the army for security reasons. Or because it is not their nation. Suddenly nationhood has become relevant. I thought there was equality of rights and duties, no?). And I do not even want to talk about crime in that sector, which is part of their culture. And all that is even before they sit in the government. If the Left wants to be in power, it can just as well annex the Palestinians to the state, and then of course it will win all the coming elections. I suggest it annex to the state the Syrians, Lebanese, Egyptians, and Jordanians as well. After all there is no such thing as a nation. One cannot claim about everything that they are citizens and this is a democracy. There is also common sense.

One of the most bizarre columns I have ever read on this site (which has not lacked bizarre columns, even if I did not comment on all of them). Perhaps the author is strict about observing Purim for two days and the wine has still not left him.

A coalition supported by the Joint List is indeed a disaster, and dismissing the danger does not testify to political wisdom (at best). Rabin’s left-wing coalition in ’92 passed the disastrous Oslo Accords, and a coalition dependent on the Joint List will be forced to repeal the Law of Return, recognize the right of return, and agree to the establishment of a PLO or Hamas terror state in the heart of the land within the ’67 borders (that is, an Iranian forward-front state that will dominate the population centers, industry, the army, and the airports). Whoever sees warnings about such a situation as “utter nonsense” would do better to drink a little juice and return to matters he (perhaps) understands something about. True, it is your site and you can write on it as your soul desires, but why make a laughingstock of yourself? What about the honor due to Torah scholars?

Netanyahu is very far from being an object of my admiration, but he is the most intelligent and talented prime minister Israel has ever had, and his achievements (mainly in foreign relations but also in the economy) are without precedent. To replace him with an inarticulate scarecrow displaying clear signs of a dementia process, who will be dependent on the whims of the terrorists’ party, is an act bordering on treason.

Unlike many who talk about “three indictments” as though they were the writings of Clausewitz (everyone quotes them but no one has read them…), I took the trouble to read the 63 pages of the screed. Revolting! A pile of gossip and nonsense. Even if you say that everything there is true, it is at most ugly behavior, but there is no criminal offense whatsoever in all the “facts” described there (many of which are patently false, and this is not the place to elaborate). One need not be a great jurist to understand that this is a criminal plot for a judicial putsch. That is, Netanyahu will spend about five years in a trial at the end of which he will be acquitted, but he will be exhausted and old and unable to return to office (cf. Reuven Rivlin, Ne’eman, Kahalani, Raful, and others). Netanyahu will become a real criminal if he gives the criminals in the State Attorney’s Office and the police that pleasure. Not for nothing does the law stipulate that a prime minister remains in office even if convicted, until a final decision on appeal. That is exactly what the legislator sought to prevent.

The legal system has honestly earned the public’s distrust. As someone who spent 10 years of his life in an office full of jurists (the State Comptroller’s Office) and knows the Israeli legal system well, I testify that it is a rotten and corrupt system to the root, full to bursting with cynical lawyers and lazy, ignorant judges, and above all corruption, corruption, and corruption. Since I do not want to go on at length, I will leave it at that. But if requested, I can provide a few spicy and shocking examples from personal testimony.

And also with regard to the other things commenters raised here, we have no idea how things will develop (will the Arabs tolerate the disrespect involved in being excluded from security matters? Will they agree to be treated like people who pose a danger and in the end not become such? After all, for them honor comes before everything). This is something that has never happened before, a social experiment. One cannot know where it will develop. They also said about the Oslo Accords that the critics were terrorizing the people, and in the end it really led to bad results and more than a thousand dead, if not more. One cannot know that the assessments that now seem to the rabbi to be what is likely to happen are indeed what is likely to happen. And even if the rabbi says “puppets” until tomorrow, that will not turn reality into something other than what it is (saying “puppets” can also serve as a kind of brainwashing. The rabbi should simply say he is not worried about it, and that’s all. Does the rabbi expect the commenters to accept his opinion just because he says it? I do this with regard to people who try to impose their opinion through social pressure, as a means of defusing mines, but not as a primary weapon of war). There are real concerns and they can be understood.

“If requested, I can provide a few examples etc. from personal testimony” — I request it.

“For you are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be His treasured people from among all the nations.” This is Israel’s special quality, which does not depend on its deeds; whether thus or thus, you are called sons. “And now, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My treasured possession from among all peoples.” This is Israel’s special quality that depends on its faithfulness to the Holy One, blessed be He. If, Heaven forbid, we distance ourselves from the ways of God, then we are called “a base and unwise people.”
Base—because of moral corruption. And unwise—in doing good. And conversely: “And you shall do what is upright and good,” for He loves what is good and upright. What is required of every Jew is required all the more so of public representatives.

One verse says that if they distance themselves from the ways of God then they are called a base people, and a second says “base” means moral corruption.

With pleasure, two representative examples (and there are more than the sand on the seashore):
1) When I worked at the State Comptroller’s Office, I attended quite a few High Court hearings in cases touching on subjects I dealt with in the course of audits. In one of the petitions (one of many) that the pension funds filed against Beiga Shochat’s pension arrangement (from 1995), I missed the first hearing. When I arrived at the second hearing I was surprised to see a new panel headed by Aharon Barak, who asked the lawyers to repeat their arguments from the previous session because at that time it was not customary to keep transcripts in the High Court (a scandal in itself). The lawyers (among the best and most expensive in the country) had to stand one after another and recite all their arguments from the previous hearing.
After the judges left the courtroom, I asked the lawyers (who knew me as a representative of the State Comptroller’s Office) why the panel had been replaced. Had someone requested the recusal of the previous panel? (By the way, it is very rare for a recusal request to be granted, even when the grounds cry out to heaven.) The lawyers explained to me that no one had requested recusal, but that in the previous hearing the judges had made remarks that Barak did not like, so he decided to dissolve the panel and seat a new one under his own leadership in order to ensure the result he desired. I asked why the lawyers had not protested. After all, Barak had no authority to dissolve the panel. The lawyers looked at me with pity, and one of them said to me: “You see that window? We’d all have flown out of it like a missile if anyone had so much as chirped.”
2) A certain woman (her name and all identifying details are being withheld by me) filed a complaint with the police against her violent, mentally ill husband, who threatened to murder her and their children. (Part of the story here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Yp_PsToOoU ). The police text-messaged away the complaint [i.e., brushed it off] (apparently thanks to the husband’s family’s connections with the police, and this is not the place to elaborate). When the woman’s father reached a very “senior command figure” in the police and showed him the material and what had been done with the file, the man reacted with shock and said: “This is extremely serious, but my hands are too short to save. All my manpower is devoted to investigations of Bibi.” Rashi’s interpretation: investigating Bibi’s cigars and champagne (in the hope of removing him from power) is more important than protecting the lives of a woman and children under murder threats from a violent, mentally ill husband. The story did not end there. Miraculously, the State Attorney’s Office cooperated with the violent husband (and still cooperates with him). Why? I don’t know. But I do know that his family has connections and a great deal of money.
As stated, I have countless more examples of corruption in the system, whose common denominator is that I know the cases directly, not from the press and not second- or third-hand.

Very interesting, thank you very much. In my opinion this is worth publishing, as a series of columns on a news site (Globes?) or on a Twitter/Telegram/Twitter account. If names and details can be provided, that is of course even better (if it catches on enough, one may even hope for responses). As wide a selection as possible of representative examples allows for a much more intelligent discussion. By the way, regarding the second story, it seems fairly self-evident that investing a budget in one large investigation comes at the expense of the ability to investigate others, and every governmental budgeting decision ultimately comes at the expense of human lives.

To Michi—I could guess that the question of being a light unto the nations doesn’t particularly interest you either.
I assume that Asa Kasher, whom you quoted, perhaps is interested in it at least a bit (or maybe not; I don’t know his views, but from his wording it sounded as though he was—and since that statement comes up many times in various contexts when people talk about the state of society, I commented on it).

I think the public’s distrust of the State Attorney’s Office in Bibi’s case is because the State Attorney’s Office is considered an interested party in cases involving senior political defendants, and especially the prime minister. If this were just an ordinary citizen, the public would not cast such doubt on the institutions of the rule of law. And even the law itself allows a prime minister to serve until there is a final judgment precisely because there is concern that some official in the legal system may desire to replace a prime minister. The legislator himself understood that there are vested interests here that one must be wary of. That is, I am not sure that the public’s distrust of the institutions of the rule of law in this specific case shows a serious problem in the public or in the system. It is probably a built-in point of distrust in every democratic regime, and therefore in many democratic systems there are also various kinds of immunities for politicians.

******Deleted due to lack of relevant content*****

A full recovery

On the weakness of the accusations against Prime Minister Netanyahu, I elaborated in my comment “The Beginning of Climbing Down from the Tree” on column 256, “The Presumption of Innocence and Other Animals.”

The actions and decisions detailed in the indictment accord with his economic doctrine of encouraging investors and investments that will develop the state’s economy, and preventing unrestrained competition where such competition may harm investment. On the basis of the indictment, I would actually recommend awarding Netanyahu the Israel Prize for his blessed work in advancing the state’s economy. See there, and this is not the place to elaborate.

With blessings, Shatz

There is a limit to openness; I ask that the comment by “Levi” be deleted. It disgraces the platform and drags the discourse down to rock bottom.

*****Deleted due to lack of relevant content***********

In my opinion the comment is so ridiculous that leaving it up does no harm. I would delete it by virtue of “and you shall have a peg among your weapons, etc.,” by virtue of basic politeness, by virtue of being unreasoned slogans, by virtue of the possibility that it may be unpleasant for readers (and perhaps also unpleasant for the site owner), by virtue of “go teach a donkey the taste of fruit soup,” and by virtue of a few other laws as well.

Indeed, deleted by virtue of “and you shall have a peg upon your ear/among your implements.” Nice definition.

I join Mordechai’s words. Although I did not read the entire indictment against Bibi, I read a great deal of it, and this is really not an indictment but a journalistic gossip column. There are truly ridiculous things there. I should stress that unlike those who defend Bibi by arguing that favorable coverage is not bribery—I hold that favorable coverage given in return for governmental bias in someone’s favor is certainly bribery, except that in the indictment there is no evidence for anything.

Another point. In Asa Kasher’s words, what strikes me as severe is the “vice versa” at the end of his remarks. Bibi is not, in my view either, a worthy leader, and yet he is far from being the embodiment of evil. Israel is not a light unto the nations—fine. But is it “darkness unto the nations”?! Is it a state at the bottom of morality? Broadcasting evil?!

Not for nothing did I not reply to Mordechai either. This is really not serious. Jurists worked on this for a long time, and it is supposed to pass judicial review in court. And all this is nothing but a ridiculous conspiracy that does not meet even a minimal evidentiary test. I find it hard to accept such a strange claim. A conspiracy can involve one or two agents, not an entire system.

With respect, it is דווקא your last comment that is not serious, and it shows that even very smart people can be naïve in fields that are not their expertise. Out of respect for you I will not use the expression Lenin coined about Western intellectuals such as Bertrand Russell and George Bernard Shaw and many others who were dazzled by the “socialist paradise” of the USSR and so forth. They were very smart people, but like you they thought Lenin’s crimes (and later Stalin’s show trials) could not be a conspiracy, that the numbers were inflated, that the USSR had an orderly judicial system and that the best prosecutors worked on every case, etc. etc. Your arguments are really not original…
It is all the stranger to hear such claims after the series of acquittals of Rivlin, Kahalani, Raful, Ne’eman, and others. In all those cases it became clear that there had been no basis to file an indictment in the first place, and it was plainly proven that the indictment had been filed solely in order to remove the defendants from their positions, or to thwart their appointment to a position they were about to receive. In all those cases the defendants were acquitted, but the State Attorney’s Office achieved its goal! That is, there are precedents in Israel for such conduct.
Unlike you (apparently), I have long and bitter experience with the Israeli legal system, and I know its rot and corruption well. I have seen lazy and ignorant judges in all instances, and I have seen falsified transcripts and miscarriages of justice as a matter of routine. In my view, an Israeli court ruling proves nothing at all (even the date on it can be forged, and such things have happened).

With respect, Rabbi Michi, I am unworthy to trouble you by having you read long texts, but I will quote here a relatively short excerpt from the indictment against Netanyahu, and I would be glad if you would read it and say whether you accept it—whether after the factual narrative presented in sections 23–26, section 28 describing Netanyahu’s guilt indeed follows from the factual narrative described, or whether it is baseless nonsense:

Summary of the second charge – Case “2000”
23. Over the years there were relations of deep rivalry between the defendants Netanyahu and Mozes. Nevertheless,
the two held three series of meetings over the years: in 2008–2009; in 2013; and in 2014.
During each of these series of meetings, the defendants Netanyahu and Mozes held discussions on advancing
their mutual interests: improving the manner of coverage of defendant Netanyahu in the media outlets of the
“Yedioth Ahronoth” group, and imposing restrictions on the newspaper “Israel Hayom,” something that had great economic significance
for defendant Mozes and for the “Yedioth Ahronoth” group.
24. At one of the meetings held on 4.12.2014, and in the run-up to the elections for the twentieth Knesset,
defendant Mozes offered defendant Netanyahu a bribe. Namely, he would bring about a marked change for the better in the line and manner
of coverage of defendant Netanyahu and his family in the media outlets of the “Yedioth Ahronoth” group, and a change
for the worse in the coverage of his political rivals, to the point of an “earthquake” and a “turning of the ship around,” as stated
in their conversation. Mozes proposed that he would do so in a manner that would ensure the continuation of defendant Netanyahu’s tenure as prime
minister over time, in return for defendant Netanyahu using his influence as prime minister
to advance legislation that would impose restrictions on “Israel Hayom” and bring significant economic benefits to defendant
Mozes and his businesses.
25. Defendant Netanyahu did not refuse the bribe offer and did not discontinue the conversation because of it, and although
he did not intend to advance the bill, he continued to conduct a long and detailed conversation with defendant Mozes about
the components of the proposal and presented to him a representation according to which there was a real possibility that he would use his governmental power
in order to advance legislation beneficial to defendant Mozes. Defendant Netanyahu acted thus in order to continue the
dialogue and thereby cause defendant Mozes to influence for the better the manner of his coverage in the media outlets of the
“Yedioth Ahronoth” group during the election period, and to cause him to act to prevent negative publications that would harm him or
his family, at least during this period and so long as the conversations between them continued.
26. Following this meeting, and in order to preserve with defendant Mozes the impression that he was examining the feasibility
of advancing said legislation, defendant Netanyahu met with the chairman of the coalition, Ze’ev Elkin, and with the chairman of the Knesset Committee,
Yariv Levin, while keeping before his eyes the possibility that the very fact of the meeting would become known to defendant Mozes.
At this meeting Elkin and Levin made clear to defendant Netanyahu that it would not be possible to advance the legislation at that time.
Subsequently, defendant Netanyahu initiated another meeting with defendant Mozes, during which he presented to him
a representation according to which he would act to advance the legislation after the elections, for the purpose of continuing the discussion with him on
the bribe proposal.
27. By these acts, defendant Mozes offered defendant Netanyahu a bribe.
28. By these acts, defendant Netanyahu committed an act of breach of trust that substantially harms public trust
in public servants and their elected officials, and in the integrity of the latter, in that he exploited his status and the power of
his office in order to receive a personal benefit, and in that, being the most senior elected public official, he conveyed a message
that bribery proposals are a tool that can be used to promote mutual interests of senior public officials and businesspeople, and that there is nothing wrong with bribery deals.

That’s the paradigmatic example you found? To my eyes these are splendid arguments, and if they are true he should be convicted of breach of trust and using the power of office to obtain personal benefits. In light of what is described here, the man is a first-rate criminal. How one can disagree with this is beyond me.

I will clarify why, in my view, the arguments are baseless

Argument B, claiming that by his actions Bibi conveyed a message that bribery is not wrong, is very strange. Let us divide the public into three groups: those who did not read the indictment; those who read all of it; and those who read exactly up to section 24. Those who did not read it do not know about the act at all and received no message from Bibi. Those who read it all saw that Bibi fooled and misled the bribe-offerer. Will the message they receive be that bribery is not wrong?! Only an absolute fool would infer such a thing. Those who read the indictment only up to section 24 will indeed receive such a message. But is one to build the claim that Bibi, by his actions, conveyed a message that bribery is not wrong because there are people who will hear only half the story?!

Argument A, that Bibi exploited the power of office to receive a personal benefit, is simply not true. Bibi exploited Noni Mozes’s greed and corruption, not the power of office. Bibi did not exercise the power of office at all. Bibi’s act is no different from any public official who accepts an invitation from someone to appear at that person’s event. The person who invites the public official to the event benefits from the aura he thinks he gets from the public official appearing at his event, and the public official publicizes himself in the eyes of the people who come to the event. Every minister invited to an event is invited because of the aura created by the power of his office; the fact that the minister appears at the event is not exploitation of the power of office to receive a benefit, but exploitation of the inviter’s desire for aura. Exploitation of the power of office would be if the minister actually skewed his ministry’s activity in favor of the person who invited him. There is no difference between the publicity Bibi received from Noni Mozes and any publicity a minister gets when he appears at some event.

Moshe, forgive me for speaking frankly. Your arguments here are so foolish that I see no point in engaging with them. I have no doubt that you are so biased and tendentious that you are unwilling to hear reasonable arguments (the alternative is that you are incapable of understanding the logic written there in so simple and clear a form. I find it very hard to assume that is the case). It has been a long time since I saw such a well-ordered, logical, and persuasive system of argument as this passage from the indictment. If someone were to present me with reasonable evidence for what is claimed there, I would push him deep into prison.

In my view, even if all the claims in the cases are true, I support Netanyahu because of his performance.

Again I’m the pest, but with respect, what you wrote here is simply embarrassing. If this is your level of judgment, it is horrifying that you are a rabbinic judge, and blessed is He who did not make you a judge in the civil courts and thus prevented you from having the power to send people to prison. Why not concentrate on areas you understand? (And thank God there are quite a few of those.)

Case 2000 is a model example of “there’s nothing there.” The world’s great jurists (such as Prof. Alan Dershowitz and, if I am not mistaken, also Prof. Ruth Gavison and others) determined unequivocally that even if all the facts described there are correct (and they are not!), there is nothing criminal here at all. (At least from Netanyahu’s standpoint; perhaps there is something from Mozes’s standpoint, but that is not the place to elaborate.) But I am not relying only on their opinion, but on simple legal logic. Suppose Mozes offered Netanyahu favorable coverage in return for passing the “Israel Hayom” law. There is no way that under the law this is bribery, because everything a politician does, by definition, is in order to get favorable press coverage that will help him be reelected. If this is bribery, then detention camps must be built for all politicians in the democratic world.

Moreover, the screed itself admits that Netanyahu did not even consider accepting the offer, but claims that in the very fact that he did not reject it out of hand there is “fraud and breach of trust.” It would be worthwhile to read the chapter on “political judgment” in Tocqueville’s classic book on democracy in America. He notes there that English and American law are full of criminal offenses that were not defined and into which anything can be inserted; but he notes that the legal and political culture in both England and the U.S. prevents putting a politician on political trial for offenses tailored especially to him. Well, he did not think of Shai Nitzan and Avichai Mandelblit. The section “fraud and breach of trust” is an example of a criminal clause we inherited from the British Mandate, one that establishes a criminal sanction for an offense the legislator never bothered to define. On that basis they criminalize an elected sitting prime minister while creating a world precedent for a criminal offense? Someone here has completely lost his mind, and it certainly isn’t me.

But if favorable coverage in exchange for the “Israel Hayom” law is bribery, why were all the members of Knesset who voted for it and received soft coverage in the pages of “Yedioth Ahronoth” not investigated or charged?

Further, the conversation between Netanyahu and Mozes was recorded by Netanyahu himself, and the recording was handed over to the State Attorney’s Office on the advice of Netanyahu’s lawyers in order to prove his innocence. (Something omitted, and not by accident, from the indictment, just as the fact was omitted that he refused to advance the law and even dissolved the Knesset and went to elections after it had passed first reading, taking a significant political risk.) Are Netanyahu’s lawyers (among the best and most expensive in the country) unfamiliar with their profession? Did they fail him? If so, why did he not fire them?

The answer to all the questions is one. Even on Salah a-Din Street they know this is nonsense. But the goal is not to put Netanyahu in prison (though they would not mourn that). The goal is to remove him from power after hope of doing so by democratic means had vanished.

All this is only in brief. I could have written a whole scroll here and also mentioned, for example, the matter of the sale of Yad2, which the devil’s prosecution sees as a bribery deal, even though it was a completely legitimate deal that any reasonable communications minister would have approved and any reasonable High Court would have forced him to approve had he refused. The deal brought about a billion shekels into the Israeli economy from a foreign investor, saved Bezeq from bankruptcy, and saved the economy from the severe consequences that could have accompanied that. Only a corrupt prosecution (like the one that concocted the blood libel against my great-great-grandfather in Tiszaeszlár) could have seen this as a bribery deal.

And the rest—go and learn.

Mordechai,
It may be that I understand nothing, and indeed this is my embarrassingly poor level of judgment. But I do not understand your words either (apparently the same embarrassing lack of understanding that characterizes me on this issue).
I was referring to the passage brought here, and only to it, and I have no intention of entering here into all the details of the indictment (though I estimate there are good answers to most of your claims, exactly as one sees from the little that was brought here).
If you think that the claims presented here (and only them) have no substance, then we really are probably speaking entirely different languages, or I really am a complete idiot. In my view, if this is true, then he should go deep into prison like the last of criminals, and certainly there is no possibility of appointing such a criminal as prime minister. The few substantive claims you made on this specific matter are completely unfounded. For some reason, despite your legal genius, you do not distinguish between a situation in which a person offers and receives a bribe and acts after an agreement, and a situation in which a person does something in order to receive favorable coverage. If you do not understand that, it does not give me much motivation to read the rest of your arguments. Some of those other ones brought here also seem to me weak to absurd, and of course circumstantial and not on the merits. Why should I care who handed over the recordings and whether the lawyers are idiots or not? On the merits, the fact that they are the source of the recordings changes absolutely nothing. The question why Netanyahu did not fire his lawyers, and other such nonsense, are circumstantial questions that you should address to him. It is just tendentious evasion from the substantive discussion.
And please do not drag in claims about selective enforcement and other claims dredged up from the depths of the Atlantic Ocean, because that is not the subject of the discussion. We are dealing here with the excerpts brought above as examples. Your flight to the Atlantic Ocean only indicates to me your tendentiousness, and that apparently you found no flaw in the arguments brought here (to remind you, they were chosen as a paradigmatic example of the alleged absurdity of the indictment).
Good thing you did not write a whole scroll, because it would not have been relevant here.
As I wrote, I see no point in continuing the discussion. This is a dialogue of the deaf. If there is no listening and no willingness to discuss substantively, and absurd arguments are raised in emphatic language, then there is no point in conducting a discussion.
All the best, contentment, and only health for all of us.

A quote from Sinai itself: “For some reason, despite your legal genius, you do not distinguish between a situation in which a person offers and receives a bribe and acts after an agreement, and a situation in which a person does something in order to receive favorable coverage.”

Did you read what you wrote? Apparently not, or else you did not understand what you wrote.

Selective enforcement, for your information, is an extremely substantive argument. But here it is not even selective enforcement (again, your lack of understanding—simply embarrassing). Here it is a matter of creating an offense out of thin air (made up, in Prof. Dershowitz’s words). An offense that does not appear anywhere in the statute book and is not defined there, specially tailored to a sitting prime minister, when he is the only one who did not “act after the agreement” (because there was no agreement and because he acted opposite to what the bribe-offerer asked, if this is bribery), while all those who received the bribe “acted after the agreement” exactly as agreed and voted for a law to close a competing newspaper, and were not even investigated. Even the legal geniuses of Sodom did not arrive at such legal distortion.

The argument about the source of the recordings and the advice of the lawyers is also extremely substantive, and only you do not understand it or pretend not to understand it (and I do not know which is worse). They understand law no less than the geniuses on Salah a-Din, and it is embarrassing that this needs to be explained at all. When a person records a conversation and hands it over on his own initiative (or on the advice of his lawyers) to police investigators, this indicates that he himself was sure he had acted lawfully. This is called “absence of the mental element” of the offense, even if by some twisted interpretation one could see an offense here. That alone should have removed this count from the agenda. In the absence of a “mental element,” there is no basis for a criminal charge. Time and again you display embarrassing ignorance. I blushed for you.

Mozes offered favorable coverage in return for the “Israel Hayom” law. Even if Netanyahu had accepted the proposal, it would be ugly but not bribery. One need not be a legal genius to understand this, and all the unbiased jurists (I named two in the previous comment) say so. And that is why the other members of Knesset who responded to an identical proposal from Mozes and “acted according to the agreement” were not investigated. Because truly there was nothing to investigate. That is how politics works—kosher but stinking. Netanyahu is the only one who was criminally charged on the basis of a catch-all offense that has no definition in the statute book and through the retroactive creation of a world precedent, in order to remove him from power. The only doubt regarding Rabbi Michi is whether he is innocent or merely pretending, and which is worse.

Ah yes, I forgot. You “estimate” there are good answers to most of my claims… and with that my claims are sealed shut.

And thank you for the wishes for health and contentment etc., likewise to you. (And if you have some free time during Torah reading, I recommend Tocqueville’s book…)

Just to note: if the lawyers thought that handing over the recordings proved there was no mental element, then perhaps there actually was a mental element, and the handover was meant to prove the opposite (and to insure against the concern that Mozes had also recorded or that the investigators would reach those recordings by some other route). A migo in the real world does not always work.

That is an interesting pilpul, but not relevant. My whole purpose was to show that the claim that the source of the recordings is “taken from the depths of the Atlantic Ocean” is foolish. Even according to your pilpul, the source of the recordings is very relevant, though only a branch of the matter and not its root. (By the way, I think you are mistaken. If the lawyers had thought he was incriminating himself, they would never have advised him to hand a sword to those seeking his life, even if the police might obtain it by another route—but this is not the place to elaborate).

But the main point—Netanyahu is the only one among all the members of Knesset to whom Mozes made an identical proposal, and not only did he not accept it, he acted against it to the point of dissolving the Knesset and taking a political risk, while all the others accepted the proposal, received favorable coverage, and in return voted to close a competing newspaper. None of the others was investigated, because truly there was nothing to investigate. That is how it is in politics, kosher but foul-smelling. Netanyahu is the only one charged criminally on the basis of a catch-all offense that has no definition in the statute book, and through the retroactive creation of a world precedent, in order to remove him from power. The only question regarding Rabbi Michi is whether he is naïve or pretending, and which is worse.

I did not understand why I am mistaken in the aside. The lawyers thought the handover would prove there was no mental element (exactly as you presented it), and they did not notice that this pulls the rug out from under the whole proof (as you too apparently did not think of it, and may the lips of the prodigy of Międzyrzecz keep speaking). Clearly they could not be certain that this would be accepted as proof of absence of a mental element (an essential part of their job is to assess what the prosecution will think), but they took the risk in order to have a legal and public case. I am not entering into the rest of the details (procedural and legal).

You set me up perfectly, except that the shot will not come so quickly…:-)

These days I am working on a game-theoretic analysis of the law of migo, and according to the thesis I am trying to prove, the law of migo is neither an umdena (presumptive estimate) nor “the force of the claim.” I will not go into the details of a draft thesis here, but if I succeed in proving it, it removes even the prodigy of Międzyrzecz’s difficulty. The first results look promising, but the work is still at rather early stages, and I assume it will take me quite a bit of time to check its fit with all the sugyot and also to go over the model, ensure that no mathematical errors crept into the modeling, etc. etc.

In any case, the law of migo is not accepted in English law or in Israeli law based upon it. An Israeli (or English) lawyer would seriously risk his license if he advised his client to hand over on his own initiative incriminating evidence to the police in order to build a basis for a migo. He is supposed to advise him to remain silent and say nothing, and pray that the police do not obtain the evidence from another source.

Very nice indeed. If, when the thesis is completed, you would be willing to send it by email, let me know and I will immediately hasten to give you my address. [In my opinion, by the way, the prodigy of Międzyrzecz’s difficulty is no difficulty, because when one needs to determine a general policy whether to accept migos or not, the only consistent course is to accept migos (if one never accepts migo, then every time there is a migo there really is an excellent “what motive would I have to lie?” If one always accepts them, one does not run into any internal contradiction)].

With God’s help, 21 Adar 5780

As is well known, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni (who is not suspected of excessive right-wing tendencies) initiated the establishment of an Ombudsman for Complaints Against the State Attorney’s Office. At first they refused to cooperate with it and launched a prolonged strike until people yielded to them and completely neutered the Ombudsman’s ability to conduct effective oversight.

The Ombudsman, retired judge Hila Gerstel (who also is not suspected of excessive right-wing tendencies), sharply criticized the conduct of Shai Nitzan and his associates, to the point of suspicion of criminal conduct in witness tampering (an attempt to influence Dr. Chen Kugel to change his professional opinion so that it would fit their agenda), and was forced to resign. And the one who came after her, retired judge David Rozen, also complains of lack of cooperation by the prosecutors with the oversight in a way that prevents it from being carried out.

If some other public authority refused to be reviewed, the rafters would shake. All the more so in the case of prosecutors who, by the very filing of a claim, may cause irreversible damage to the defendant, who even if acquitted years later has had his good name harmed and has suffered much anguish and wasted strength and resources without justification.

If justice is so important to them, then they too should act justly and open themselves to effective oversight that will restore the public’s trust in them.

With blessings, Shatz

I’m done.

I can think of several reasons why the lawyers handed over the recording. But there is no one to talk to.
Mordechai, out of sheer anger you’re not even reading what I wrote to you. I didn’t write that the recordings were taken from the ocean. But as stated, we’re done. All the best.

The prodigy of Międzyrzecz’s question was well answered in my booklet on the law of migo.

Similar to what I have there.

I of course read that wonderful booklet (about 10 years ago). If it’s there, then that’s where I took it from (and it turns out I forgot, because I thought it was a new answer..). But it seems to me that once I suggested this explanation to you here on the site and you did not accept it. I’ll check further.

This answer was inserted into it a few years ago בעקבות a discussion with Beni. I assume this is the gist of the game-theoretic explanation Mordechai was talking about.

I found it here (I am the one called “Shua”)
https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%D7%A4%D7%A8%D7%93%D7%95%D7%A7%D7%A1-%D7%94%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%92%D7%95
It seems to me that I said there exactly this answer, you did not accept it, and you even explained to me what the problem with it was (and I wrote that I understood! How great is the power of forgetting).

With God’s help, 21 Adar 5780

To the Rosh Yeshiva—greetings,

More power to you for the sources you cited. I would add that Rabbi Yehuda Amital also explained (in his book And the Earth He Gave to the Children of Men) that the religious meaning of the restoration of the people of Israel in its land is the sanctification of God’s name through our being a model for the whole world in moral conduct. Of course this does not come of itself, and we must labor hard for it to be so!

With blessings, Shatz

I looked quickly, and it is not so. What you wrote there is indeed not correct. There you argued that there is doubt regarding the migo, except that the alternative is worse. Here we are saying something else (unless that is not what you meant, and only I am saying it): even if you establish the migo, you have not improved the liar’s situation, for even without the migo he could have lied with the better claim. You will not be able to block liars, not with migo and not without migo. In short, leaving migo in place does not improve the liar’s situation, and therefore there is no problem at all in establishing a rule of migo in court. This is not a doubt, nor fifty-fifty. In my view, the migo comes only to ensure that truth-tellers will not be forced to lie. See my booklet there.

Regarding Case 2000, it should be noted that even if Netanyahu really did have serious intentions in the negotiations with the editor of Yedioth Ahronoth, there is nothing wrong with that. If the newspaper demands a monopoly over the media, which would lead to the closure of the right-wing newspaper, then it is the prime minister’s right to demand that within that monopoly balanced coverage be preserved between right and left and between his supporters and opponents. That is a fair demand.

With blessings, Shatz

I just found in the booklet the new explanation that was added years later. It really is somewhat different despite the similarity.
There too, the answer looks systemically at the court’s general policy decision (whether to accept migo or not). The difference is that you say one accepts migo because it does no harm (it gives no new power to liars) and it is beneficial (it allows truth-tellers not to be tempted to lie).
I am saying something similar but different (and in my opinion stronger, because it touches only on the truth of the law and not on side benefits of protecting decent people from temptation by the evil inclination). I say that the decision not to accept migo is self-contradictory. If one does not accept migo, then there truly is a “what motive would I have to lie?” (the person came and advanced a claim he knows he will lose with, when he had it in his hands to win), and therefore every single ruling of a court that adopts a policy of not accepting migo is false, and there is strong proof against it (“what motive would I have to lie?”). Such a contradiction does not appear if one adopts a general policy of accepting migo.
What happens in practice when a person comes and makes a claim by force of migo—indeed he has no external support of “what motive would I have to lie?” and like any person he may be a liar or a truth-teller. After all, even in your view he may be a liar (to assume that every liar would prefer to choose the better claim rather than take a risk with a migo seems circular to me; he wants to acquire the status of a truth-teller). In any case, this component is not part of the fundamental argument but independent of it.
If you say that further study there will make it clear to me, then I will go on studying it again and again instead of making you repeat the explanation.

In any case, Mordechai, perhaps you too will find some value in the new explanation there in the booklet, and perhaps also in the old discussion I linked to.

What you wrote here is already similar to what I wrote in the original version there: that the correct and efficient policy is for the court itself to decide whether to accept the weaker claim on the basis of migo or not. There will be no fixed policy. In such a situation there is a threat that will encourage the liar not to rely on the migo, and the truth-teller need not lie (though he takes a risk, because perhaps the court will not be impressed that he really is a truth-teller).

With God’s help, 23 Adar 5780

Regarding the reason that led Avigdor Liberman to change his firm position against cooperation with the Joint List, it has already been reported in the press that he told his associates in closed conversations that he is furious over seven complaints filed against him with the police alleging that he was involved in corruption affairs (within the framework of the well-known “Yisrael Beiteinu affair” and others), and that, according to him, Netanyahu stood behind the complaints against him. And for that, according to Liberman, “there is no pardon and no forgiveness even on Yom Kippur.” One thus understands why he launched an all-out war to remove Netanyahu, even at the price of cooperating with Odeh, Tibi, Yazbak, and their associates.

Regarding Benny Gantz, I suspect that the reason for the change in policy and the willingness to join up with the Joint List is the instruction by acting State Attorney Dan Eldad to the police to open an investigation into unlawful acts carried out in the negotiations between the company “The Fifth Dimension” (headed by Gantz) and the police, where it was claimed that the company presented false representations to the police. It is now claimed that Gantz himself was not involved in the negotiations and served only as a “decoration” for the company (a claim that would seem to require an explanation for Gantz’s meeting with Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh). Support by the Joint List for a government headed by Gantz could bring about a situation in which the ministers of justice or public security are people politically dependent on him, and a situation in which the confidant of the president of “The Fifth Dimension” is in charge of investigating it is certainly unhealthy.

With blessings, Shatz

Incidentally, Benny Gantz is apparently named after my cousin, Lt. Benjamin (Benny) Roth, of blessed memory, who was an intelligence officer and was killed on patrol near Kisufim on the 25th of Iyar 5715. My uncle Nathan Roth and his family were neighbors (house next to house in Kfar Ahim) of Benny Gantz’s parents. Therefore, apparently, Nachum Gantz named his son, born four years later (on 3 Sivan 5719), “Benjamin,” and he, may he live and be well, did indeed continue Benny Roth’s military path; let us hope that his old age will not disgrace his youth!

In paragraph 2, line 1–2
… it is the instruction of the acting State Attorney…