High Court of Justice: Disturbing results
צילום: גיל יוחנן
37 percent think Israeli courts are corrupt
Quarter of public believes bribes buy fair trials; Israel corrupt, but Syria, Lebanon, Iran even worse, says international survey
A survey published on Thursday revealed disturbing figures: 37 percent of Israelis believe that the Israeli court system is corrupt.
The survey was commissioned by the Israeli branch of Transparency International (TI), a leading international, non-governmental organization addressing corruption.
The focus of this year's TI report was judicial systems around the world. The Israeli survey, conducted by Gallop, revealed that 77 percent of Israeli citizens believed that the Israeli court system was slow and inefficient.
Only 47 percent said they believed that the courts were fair. Some 24 percent of the participants said that somebody in the system must be bought off if you want a fair trial.
Participants were asked to grade the level of corruption at various establishments in Israel (one to five, where five is most corrupt). The educational, courts and health system, the police, public services and the tax authority were all graded between 2.6 and 3.3, with the police graded as most corrupt.
Less corrupt than Iran
Professor Joseph Gross, chairman of SHVIL, TI's Israeli branch, said that Israel was ranked number 34 among 163 countries assessed for the international corruption index. "Israel received the grade 5.9 out of 10 (the least corrupt)."Israel is less corrupt than other countries in the region. Other Middle Eastern countries range from 5.3 (Jordan) to 2.7 (Iran). The countries rated as least corrupt were Scandivian countries with a 9.5 grade, Switzerland with 8.6, Germany with 8.0 and the US with 7.3.
Susanne Tam, SHVIL's CEO, added that "one of the questions that arise from these results is: Does the fact that the public has the notion that everything is corrupt, influence their outlook on judges and the court system. The results are upsetting. They must bring the system to the realization that there is a problem."
