Can we know for whom…?

I haven’t decided finally yet. I thought about Sa’ar, but I’m still waiting to see developments and get to know the people on his list better.

I’ll offer what appears to my battered and lowly understanding as to why those who are supposedly commonly seen as close to religion [traditional, Haredi, and religious people] are supposedly drawn to a form of rule over the holy people by a defendant charged with bribery, fraud, and breach of trust, despite all the disgrace, filth, and rot that this brings upon the whole nation.
And those who supposedly seem less committed to religion are not defiled by this impurity.
[Of course, this is by way of the healthy tool the Creator gave us to survive in the universe; that tool is called “generalization.”] There are some traditional, Haredi, and religious people who are disgusted by crowning a defendant charged with bribery, fraud, and breach of trust over a people that is supposed to be a light unto the nations. And they won’t vote for a party that won’t commit to forming a government without this blemish. And there are apparently [I don’t know any, but I assume there may be some] secular people who would support such a despicable government.
But broadly speaking, the image of the division seems clear.
A secular person is disgusted by the impurity and disgrace of having a defendant charged with bribery, fraud, and breach of trust at the head of the nation.
Those who appear close to religion are not ashamed at all, not disgusted. It even seems they enjoy opening wide for this gap…

Yael Kgam and Mr. “If one merits,” your words seem strange to me, and perhaps mixed with parody. In my eyes there is nothing puzzling about someone who thinks Netanyahu is a good prime minister (perhaps a very good one), and in particular preferable to his rivals. And the matter of the basket of creeping things can certainly be postponed for a few years for the sake of the larger issue. That this should astonish you so greatly—I am amazed. [And I’ll insert my personal opinion too: Likud is a very bad and negative party, but Netanyahu the man—if not for the fact that he heads the Likud government and its satellites—could have been an excellent prime minister. And on foreign policy, within the constraints one can recognize, it seems to me that he conducted himself well, as all Israeli prime ministers throughout the generations have done, no one absent. And regarding corruption, although I think he is guilty of all the charges against him, I also think, like Ruth Gavison said, that the judges will not be able to render a just judgment because there are sides both ways and the social pressure in every milieu is very strong.]

It seems simple that “if one merits, it becomes for him an elixir of life; if not, it becomes for him the elixir of death”—this is a clear and unequivocal answer of the Sages. It rests mainly on an explanation of the basic plain meaning of the prophetic statement [from the mouth of God]: “The righteous shall walk in them, and transgressors shall stumble in them.” In them, and not in something else.
Clearly, for a people that is supposed to be a light unto the nations, this is an everlasting disgrace and a desecration of God’s name the like of which I doubt there have been many since the six days of Creation.
At the end of the day, there is not even one decent nation that would appoint even a school principal, even in some remote town, a man charged with such severe offenses relevant to his office.
All the more so when he subordinates his office and the good of the nation, its lives and its property, to an attempt to escape prison through power. And for that purpose literally endangers the people and their future. [And it’s irrelevant whether he is found guilty in the end or not. The question is a moral and ethical one concerning a people with lofty talk about morality and values, but in practice…
For prison and trial, what matters is only evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. That is not what is under discussion now.]

Personally,
I stopped reciting every morning, with God’s name and kingship, the blessing “who has not made me a gentile.”
Simply because now the special quality of Israel is not evident. [And regarding something—or a time—when it is not evident, it’s not certain that the Men of the Great Assembly instituted a blessing with God’s name and kingship.]
A nation that again and again crowns over itself [under the sponsorship of rabbis who are supposedly meant to be upright and spiritual shepherds…] a defendant charged with bribery, fraud, and breach of trust—how can one bless that He did not make me someone else, when other nations do not do such a low and despicable thing?
I wonder what the Rabbi thinks about the blessing in a situation where the special quality of Israel is not evident?

With God’s help, 3 Nisan 5781

The right-wing religious and traditional public in particular relates suspiciously both to the media and to the law-enforcement and judicial systems, which are suspected of a leftward bias—a posture that is praiseworthy at the Passover Seder, but not in judgment 🙂

The charges against the prime minister are dubious, if not absurd.

What “bribery” are we talking about? The Walla website was leftist and hostile to Netanyahu even in the Elovitch period. So publishing a few favorable articles about Sara Netanyahu within a sea of negative writing—is that a “benefit”?

And just as he did not receive—so too he gave nothing. The approval of the Bezeq-Yes merger was approved by dozens of officials and economic and legal advisers after years of examinations, and Netanyahu’s approval as communications minister was merely formal.

Even the proposal to slow the privatization of the fixed-line phone market in exchange for a commitment by Bezeq to invest in infrastructure—which according to Filber was proposed to him by Netanyahu in a conversation of a few minutes—is professionally called for, since rapid and reckless privatization harms infrastructure.

By the way, this very principle—that privatization does not benefit sectors requiring broad investment in infrastructure, such as health, transportation, and education—was taught to me by my former neighbor Mr. Roni Alsheikh many years ago, and therefore I was surprised that while dealing with the Communications Ministry, Mr. Alsheikh forgot his own insights. This requires further study 🙂

The whole “bribery deal” rests on the contradiction-ridden “testimony” of Netanyahu’s media adviser, given after pressure and threats, in which a woman with whom he had been romantically involved was shown to him, and he understood that if he did not “provide the material” his interrogators wanted against Netanyahu, the embarrassing affair would be publicized and he would get in trouble with his family.

Even more absurd is Case 2000, in which the publisher of Yedioth Ahronoth tried to extort Netanyahu into agreeing to the “Israel Hayom law,” a law that was about to pass in the Knesset with the support of 43 MKs who had been pampered with lots of “favorable coverage” by Yedioth Ahronoth. And specifically Netanyahu, who did not accept the extortion proposal, is accused of “breach of trust”…

So what remains? Case 1000, in which he received champagne and cigars from his billionaire friend Milchan, while the prosecution admits these were given not as bribery but as gifts between friends. Here too, one cannot see what the “quid pro quo” was. Netanyahu’s conversation with the American secretary of state regarding the American passport that had been revoked from him because of his security assistance to Israel—this is the prime minister’s obligation to care for a person harmed because of his activity for the security of the state.

Likewise Netanyahu’s appeal to the finance minister to extend the tax exemption for returning residents and to establish a “free trade zone” in the Jordan Valley—these are things that benefit the state’s economy, and are called for by Netanyahu’s energetic activity to encourage investment and investors.

The great severity I see as a religious person is the acceptance of champagne, which is ordinary gentile wine, into the kitchen of the prime minister’s residence, where it was presumably also served to official guests—and that should not be done. The official residence of the prime minister should be conducted with kashrut and not make itself disgusting with ordinary gentile wine. For that, in my humble opinion, Netanyahu deserves a heavy monetary fine and a few more months of community service as prime minister, beyond the term 🙂

And I would direct the “pursuers of justice” to deal with the problems of judges sitting in judgment over insurance companies represented by their spouses and ruling in their favor; with the problems of state prosecutors who induce an expert witness to change his opinion—“witness tampering” in plain Hebrew; and with police and prosecutors who leak classified and selective information from investigations to the media, and who abuse and mistreat detainees, etc., etc….

With blessing, Gatekeeper

Neither you nor I have the ability to judge. That is the role of judges. And every defendant can think he didn’t cross the criminal threshold. Or at least that they won’t succeed in proving his crimes beyond a reasonable doubt.
So what?
That is not the discussion.
Everyone is supposed to have values.
And decent people do not appoint—not even as a cucumber guard—someone charged with such severe offenses.
At least not until things are clarified in court.

An upright nation, all the more so.
A nation that is supposed to be “a light unto the nations”—the grandson of an a fortiori argument.
Certainly not as a teacher or school principal or mayor.
How much more so not someone who will hold the future and fate of the nation in his hands…

I’m ashamed.
But again and again I don’t believe what I’m seeing.
It was דווקא the left that had a prime minister who carried out the disengagement [not Bibi, who voted in the Knesset 3 times… in favor, of course, but Olmert.] who even planned a convergence from all of Judea and Samaria… literally the dream of their lives…
But the moment the suspicions became known and the police began to investigate, they removed him. Even before the police conclusions and recommendations. Even before the prosecution recommendations. Before the attorney general’s decision. Certainly before a hearing. Certainly before indictment…
As befits upright people..
And it is דווקא the right, the rabbis, and the whole gang who continue with the defendant charged with bribery, fraud, and breach of trust…
Values? Integrity? Clean hands? Love of the Jewish people? What is there in this lowliness?
With sorrow, disgrace, and great shame. An upright settler.

What’s the whole story anyway. The right doesn’t believe (and rightly so) in the media, the prosecution, or the courts. And whoever wrote here about Olmert has no proof. Just as the left has no loyalty to the Jewish people, so too it has no loyalty to anyone from its own ranks either (I’m not talking about blind loyalty. Loyalty at all), and therefore they love to depose the head of their camp morning and night. I am convinced that when Olmert was caught, many in that camp rejoiced deep in their hearts over it. There is no integrity on the left. Delusional people with no self-awareness (and no more upright than the same lack of integrity they accuse the right of. One who disqualifies does so with his own much greater blemish). I have not known a single secular person (and I know quite a few) who doesn’t cut corners. All the integrity they talk about is a bluff. I have come to realize in my short life that a person who does not have fear of God (and not every religious person has it) cannot be upright.

What is in everyone’s heart—it’s impossible to know.
Only God sees the heart.

But what is in the deeds—everybody sees.

And what everybody sees is rabbis and the right crowning again and again a defendant charged with bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. They see him subordinating the nation for the sake of escaping prison. And they ignore it… and they see that the left removed a sitting leader already at the investigation stage. On one side, integrity [too extreme for my taste?]; on the other side, a willingness to abandon the good of the nation, its future and its lives and success, and hand it over to someone playing with that just to escape prison. Zero integrity, zero values, everything hypocrisy and lies…
That’s what one sees with one’s eyes.

A settler who opens his eyes.

And when they descend,
I don’t believe in the special quality of Israel in its factual sense (that we really are different in some genetic or essential way from the gentiles). I think being a chosen people is a mission (that we should conduct ourselves as a chosen people) and not a given state. In any case, it has nothing to do with the question of whether we actually do this in practice. We thank the Holy One, blessed be He, for choosing us to be His treasured people. It’s like the Haredim who don’t thank the Holy One, blessed be He, for the establishment of the state because of what it looks like. He gave us a gift and we use it improperly, and because of that we don’t thank Him?! I am amazed! It is like someone who received a gift from his friend and threw it into the sea, and now does not thank him because the gift is in the sea.

With God’s help, 3 Nisan 5781

Olmert’s conduct was always dubious, but he always slipped “under the radar” until he began provoking the rule of the High Court and the “gatekeepers” by appointing Haim Ramon as justice minister, and after him Professor Daniel Friedman, who were not among the “devotees of juristocracy.”

Haim Ramon was removed by opening a case because he returned a kiss to a female soldier who had made advances to him. She didn’t want to complain at all until they pressured her. The court too was not very moved by the affair and sentenced him to community service without moral turpitude. Professor Friedman could not be removed by finding fault in him—so they brought out of the closet Olmert’s “basket of creeping things,” the one who had appointed him.

Olmert’s “basket of creeping things” included hundreds of thousands of shekels transferred by a contractor to his brother, who was under financial pressure, and even from that the Supreme Court acquitted him and reduced his sentence from six years to a year and a half (which he received for another affair), with the Berdichev-style argument that perhaps the mayor did not know about the money the contractor transferred to his brother. The city engineer, the scapegoat who carried out the mayor’s orders, did not benefit from the Berdichev style of the Supreme Court judges, and he was sent to seven years in prison. Still, Olmert’s “merit” in carrying out the disengagement stood for him. And even the year and a half was shortened for “good behavior,” which included holding secret documents in prison 🙂

The merit of the disengagement stood even more for Arik Sharon, whose son received a “salary” of millions from Dudi Appel, who happened to need the prime minister’s approval in the “Greek island” affair. Miraculously, the case was closed by Attorney General Meni Mazuz in exactly the same week that Sharon announced the disengagement. Even the High Court judges noted in their ruling that the special political situation required special caution regarding suspicions against the prime minister, and decided to turn a blind eye to the millions transferred by the contractor to his son…

As against the hundreds of thousands and millions in actual money by contractors to the son or brother of the prime minister—when it came to Netanyahu they managed to find “cigars and champagne” received as gifts from his billionaire friend and transferred to the pantry of his official residence to be served as refreshments to his guests, who are guests of the state. And a few marginal favorable articles that the Walla site kindly published, like a drop of water amid the attacks and negativity of that site’s writers.

That is what emerged from years of work by dozens of investigators at the cost of millions. The “fishing” failed to find any transfer of money either to Netanyahu or to his family.

With blessing, Gatekeeper

Sir, not only are you really, really not precise in the facts, presenting quarter-truths and distorting facts. Worse than that.
And about that it is very hard to repent… [Maimonides, Laws of Repentance, on false opinions and character traits.] I’ll tell you a story.
I moved into a new apartment, and before the Sabbath I set the Sabbath timer. And I discovered disaster. The timer turns the lights off on time but doesn’t turn them on in the morning. I checked, and an electrician explained to me that the installer [on behalf of the contractor] was such an incompetent fool. The timer cuts off the current to itself as well. So it doesn’t know time is passing and that it needs to turn on… A proper installation cuts the current only after the timer, and the timer keeps operating and turns the electricity on at the right time.
And as for our matter: even someone who has a thinking mind [and they are the minority, as is known]—if he decides to be captured by conspiracies and nonsense, then the mind itself is captured in conspiracies. And then his wisdom [if he has any; the presumption of the majority says he doesn’t] will not stand by him at all. And he will write utter nonsense like what you wrote. And one has free choice regarding the part of straight thinking or…

To the settler

Get out of your movie. Nobody commented on this to you, but maybe you’re 16 years old (I hope so), so you’re not self-aware or don’t know human nature. First of all, a truly upright person doesn’t declare about himself that he is upright. That is simply lack of self-awareness. A person actually is not born upright. He is not born upright but wild and deceitful (“a wild donkey of a man is born”; all of him is falsehood). It’s just that a person who has fear of God understands that it won’t pay for him to steal and cheat because he won’t have blessing and success in the long run from it, but on the contrary he’ll only suffer loss from it. And anyone past 16 knows there are many tests and temptations for a person, and it’s easy to talk about others, but when it reaches your own flesh the absolute majority of people fail unless they have the fear of God I spoke of. As for me, I don’t trust someone who declares about himself that he is upright. One who is so arrogant and frivolous has a presumption against him that when the moment of truth comes he will fall. See the case of the knight of morality, prophet of the left, Amos Oz (that if the things said about him are true, it would not surprise anyone on the right). To our matter, nobody on the right really believes the prosecution and the left, and not the courts either. With no calculations. Truly and sincerely they do not believe. These are not people chosen by the right and representing it. They were imposed on it from outside. These people seek the harm of the right and of the Jewish people (they do not believe in the Jewish people; that is an unconstitutional concept), and it is like believing the Palestinians in these matters. Even if the things were true (as someone said, the 2000 and 4000 cases are ridiculous), we are all sure that the left, lacking fear of God, certainly sins in these same matters, and therefore they have no mandate at all to accuse someone of a sin in which they themselves sin.

What exactly are the calculations here, according to your view? To crown over us someone who wants our harm or is utterly stupid? Don’t you grasp that all this is manipulation by the crumbling left trying to impose its imaginary values on the rest of the people? When reality doesn’t work, they begin inventing things about the practices of the opposing camp (this has existed since the communist period). Even after all the nonsense from the righteous poseurs (who are not righteous) on the left, Bibi is still the best (and I have never voted Likud)

I always say that self-righteousness is the partner of wickedness (the beginning of “treasured people”). A helpmate against it. And as our eyes see, the left in the world (especially in the USA) supports Iran, murderers, terrorists, the Chinese, and all the kingdoms of evil of every sort.

With God’s help, 3 Nisan 5781

As I showed above, the possibility of accusing Netanyahu of a bribery deal stands on the shaky legs of the testimony of Nir Hefetz, given under pressure and threats and internally refuted. The very appeal to the Walla site to improve its coverage of Netanyahu is “an everyday occurrence,” just as the rejection of a considerable part of his requests by the site is also a common thing.

Likewise, the decisions of the Communications Ministry to approve the merger of Bezeq and Yes and to prefer requiring Bezeq to invest in infrastructure over opening the market to reckless competition that would spell the end of infrastructure development—these are reasonable decisions in themselves, except that there is still room to argue “breach of trust,” because Netanyahu should not have made a decision benefiting Elovitch, whose site under his ownership gave him a small benefit by publishing several favorable articles.

Here it should be noted that unlike Jewish law, which requires a judge to disqualify himself from judging the matter of someone who gave him a “benefit,” even if it is “favorable coverage,” since even verbal bribery is forbidden—in Israeli law a slight benefit in the form of “favorable coverage” is not seen as a sweeping reason to require a judge to recuse himself, and the matter depends on the question of how much of a real concern there is for bias in the ruling. Retired judge Rachel Shalev-Gertel, in her article “Verbal Bribery — Between Jewish Law and Israeli Law,” remarked on the problematic nature of this vague definition and called to establish clear rules for when “favorable coverage” given to a judge requires recusal and when it does not.

If with judges Israeli law refused to establish a sweeping norm of disqualification due to receiving “favorable coverage,” then all the more so applying such a sweeping norm to an elected politician is problematic. After all, the very lifeblood of politics in a democratic state is that elected officials make decisions so that the public will give them “favorable coverage” and support them at the ballot box. If a politician were required not to make decisions out of expectation of “favorable coverage,” we would have to forbid him to make any decision at all 🙂

On its face, it seems obvious to the legislator that all politicians’ decisions are “tainted” by the positive appeal of “seeking favorable coverage,” and for that reason there are mechanisms of oversight—professional, legal, and political—that prevent the politician from being a sole judge and examine the reasonableness of his decisions.

In any case, if one tries to establish rules of the game that will forbid politicians from making decisions for the sake of “favorable coverage,” the rules of the game need to be set in advance and not applied retroactively through “personalized and retroactive judicial legislation.” Let them establish clear rules and enforce them on everyone.

With blessing,, Gatekeeper

This retroactive judicial legislation is precisely the difference between the judicial activism in the style of Shamgar of blessed memory and the judicial activism in the style of Barak. Shamgar tried to establish clear rules that would allow everyone to understand in advance what is permitted and what is forbidden.

By contrast, Barak in his “Aprofim doctrine” destroyed even the clarity of signed contracts, by allowing the court to interpret them retroactively according to considerations of reasonableness and purpose, to the point where even the lawyer who drafted the contract cannot know its legal meaning.

Paragraph 4, line 1
… a sweeping norm of disqualification due to…

The whole matter of the cases and trials was meant to ensure that the CEO would act according to the manufacturer’s and shareholder’s instructions.
And he is indeed doing so, and follows the instructions to the finest detail.

Immanuel, Gatekeeper uh… etc.
David says in Psalms: “When you saw a thief, you ran with him, and your portion was with adulterers.”
There is the plain meaning in Hebrew. And there is the plain meaning in Yiddish. In Yiddish: you saw a thief, and you came running with him. Every thief has an excuse for why he steals. It’s only an excuse, it’s not the reason. The reason is that he decided to be a thief…
All the excuses that were listed [beyond inaccuracies, outright lies, and mainly fantasy conspiracies and lunacies, and the projection that if I’m not upright then probably the whole world is like that, or at least from its very foundation and origin…] contain the thief’s familiar excuse. It was and remains an embarrassing excuse… Upright people know they are upright. And they flee from the opposite like from fire. Someone who neither flees nor identifies crookedness because he has decided in his soul to connect himself to falsehood, and abandoned himself to it—of course this is not relevant to right or left. Not someone who doesn’t evacuate Khan al-Ahmar [despite the High Court ruling], doesn’t deal with Gaza, voted 3 times in favor of the disengagement, conducted negotiations about withdrawing from the Golan, would be considered right-wing… nor his opponents left…

With God’s help, 3 Nisan 5781

As I showed, in a democratic regime one cannot demand that considerations of the voters’ approval not be a central consideration in the decision-making system. Clearly, the legislators of the “Israel Hayom law” wanted to give the left-wing media a monopoly and therefore wanted to ban the free newspaper Israel Hayom, just as it is clear that the law’s opponents wanted to preserve the existence of the newspaper supporting the right.

But the law was phrased in a “categorical” way and banned every newspaper distributed free of charge, without distinction as to whether its policy was right-wing or left-wing. By force of that law, publishing a left-wing free newspaper would also be forbidden, and publishing a daily sold for money would be permitted even if it were right-wing. Therefore one can say that even if the real reason is self-interested, the rationale given for the law is reasonable and the law is “equal for all.”

Another example is the legalization of cannabis. Both Netanyahu the “corrupt” and Sa’ar the “righteous and upright” committed, against their original opinion, to support this legalization in exchange for political support from the proponents of legalization—Netanyahu in order to bring about Feiglin’s withdrawal from the race, and Sa’ar in order to receive the support of Aleh Yarok.

The political interest is transparent, and nevertheless no one thinks of accusing the politicians of “breach of trust,” since plausible explanations can be given for the proposed law, such as the argument that it is preferable for cannabis marketing to be done openly and under supervision rather than secretly by crime organizations. I personally think that permitting cannabis will bring a high risk that teenagers will stumble with the drug and become addicted to it and to harder ones than it, but in a democratic regime it is difficult to prevent a decision based on a different reasoning, so long as the things are justified with reasonable arguments and create a categorical imperative equal for all.

Entrusting the decision to public representatives, who depend on the “favorable coverage” of their voters, carries a risk of decisions arising from interests rather than from purely objective considerations, but that is the price of a democratic regime, and as long as there are mechanisms supervising reasonable justification and equality of the law for all, one can live with it so long as we have not found a better method of government.

With blessing, Gatekeeper

Hello Yael,

As best I remember, Michi once wrote here that he doesn’t understand at all why people need to admire and appreciate people like politicians, outstanding athletes, etc.

Among other things, he wrote there:

“Those shrieking Indians about Bibi the emperor apparently arrived at this after deep study of the tendencies of the Jewish people in light of Kantian epistemology and the thought of Buber.”

Likewise, he makes a distinction between people who received “gifts” (like athletes, models, etc.), and people who got where they are through labor, for example: intellectual, moral, or spiritual level.

So as a relatively smart person*, Michi presumably thinks it’s legitimate to *appreciate* smart people.

But as usual, both in the case of Bibi and in the case of athletes, Michi presents them in a crooked and unserious way, one that will make him look as though he is right. Michi of course also presents most of the people as bumpkins who worship Bibi only because he is a politician.

Personally, I have a lot of appreciation for Bibi also because he is a talented politician.
But also because of many other things—a great statesman, an officer in the Sayeret Matkal unit who risked his life more than once (and was even wounded) for the Jewish people. A person with the inner strength to make decisions about hard lockdowns and stand firmly against the people. To pick up the red phone in the middle of the night and approve an attack in Syria. To manage, not badly, a state with so many extremes in it, etc. etc. etc. I think an overwhelming majority of the people appreciate/admire Bibi because of these things, and not because of what Michi tries to sell in his columns.

As stated, he will of course only present “Bibi the politician” or “Kobe the basketball player.”
With Bibi I already said what he will present and what he won’t. And Kobe Bryant he will presumably also diminish. Of course he won’t bother, for example, to look at Wikipedia and read about all the charitable institutions Kobe established, and how involved he was in philanthropy, etc.

*Michi is relatively smart. But it’s important to note that we’re not talking about Einstein, Turing, Newton, or anything close. I don’t recall reading, for example, about the “Abraham constant” or “Michi’s theorem,” etc. I haven’t heard of patents he invented. And I don’t think the scientific papers he was a partner in changed anything in the world . . .

From a person who invested his life in study and is an intellectual, one might have expected more (is it pleasant for you to read that, Michi?).

**I suggest you study the writings of Dr. Michi Abraham in depth. Among other things, he writes there, following the (problematic) behavior of part of the Haredi public during the coronavirus period, that he *understands* why pogroms were carried out against the Jews of Eastern Europe in the 19th century.

So what do you say, Yael—do you think Michi is the person to direct these questions to?