It's not the kiss, stupid

It is commonly said that people - regardless of how smart they are - lose their wisdom when required to defend themselves. A doctor would do well if he didn’t try to cure himself, and an attorney would be better off not managing his own trial in a court of law. Haim Ramon, a lawyer by profession, made every possible mistake en route to being convicted. Anyone reading the 71 page verdict cannot think otherwise.

When investigators first contacted Ramon, he could have said: Excuse me, there has been a misunderstanding, I thought the girl in question was interested, I was wrong, I feel bad, I am prepared to apologize to her, her officers and her parents.

Had he behaved in such a manner the case would have been closed. The girl identified as H. would have dropped the case, she didn't want to file a complaint anyway – and even if she wouldn’t have dropped the case, Attorney General Menachem Mazuz would have closed it. Mazuz doesn't belong to the type of people who end a minister's career (turning them into sex offenders) because of an innocent misunderstanding.

But alas, Ramon maintained that there was no kiss, at least not a kiss using his tongue, and in any case the complainant initiated the kiss, or alternately if she didn't initiate it, it was consensual. Ramon forced Mazuz to make a decision: If he is telling the truth she is lying, and if she is telling the truth he is lying. Under such circumstances it is very difficult to close a case.

Ramon continued to err. He fell into the classic trap the majority of harassment suspects fall into, including Moshe Katsav. He tried to turn the complainant into a man-eater, a sex maniac, and himself into an innocent victim at her hands.

The judges looked at him and then at her, and didn’t believe him. They saw how Ramon, or those interested in his wellbeing, took the trial onto the streets, how the photographs of the two were distributed in the media, how public figures, and particularly female representatives, were being used to market Ramon's version.

Unfortunately, a major part of what the judges wrote in the verdict against the media is true, but it wasn't the media being put on trial, it was Ramon. He made the judges think he was attempting, according to them, to obstruct legal proceedings.

Different Ramon revealed

A justice minister obstructing legal proceedings? This is a far more severe accusation, much more so than the indecent act for which he was convicted.

Ramon told them what an attractive man he is, and how many young women seek his tongue. They saw a 56–year-old man, eight years older than the complainant's father, who refuses to look at himself in the mirror.

He told them that the accusation was nothing but a conspiracy by rivals who wanted to oust him from the post of justice minister. The judges were not convinced. A conspiracy, they know, is the last resort used by politicians.

After all, it is inconceivable that politicians would sit in the dock like any other defendant. Yitzhak Mordechai is still convinced that he fell victim to a political conspiracy, and the same applies to Moshe Katsav.

I like Ramon; he is charming and has the ability to touch people, to slap them on the back without alienation and without aloofness. He knows his way around the corridors of power. He knew how to serve and capture the hearts of Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert.

During the investigation and trial, a different Ramon was revealed: Frightened, hysterical, bitter and lacking any judgment. People are perturbed by the kiss he gave the young officer on the day two IDF soldiers were kidnapped by Hizbullah, between one security consultation on the way to war and another.

I am more disturbed that such immature, irrational people decided our fate. Even if Ramon had been acquitted, it is doubtful whether he would have found a place in the cabinet.

At the end of the 1980s the country was in turmoil because of a rape incident in Kibbutz Shomrat. A Haifa judge by the name of Micha Lindenstrauss, currently the State Comptroller, acquitted the rapists. The State appealed the ruling and Supreme Court Justice Meir Shamgar convicted them. His verdict served as a milestone in the attitude to sex crimes.

Public opinion is what will determine whether the norms adopted by the court in Ramon's trial will become obligatory, or whether they will turn into a footnote in the history of Israeli society. Public opinion is what will determine whether the judges set a rule, or whether they imposed a decree that the public doesn't want and cannot abide by.

As far as Ramon is concerned, the trial is over; from every other aspect it is still open.