A game of 'War'
Op-ed: Prime Minister Netanyahu's alleged actions, even if they turn out to not entail criminal penalties, certainly seem to violate traditional ethics, and to go against the integrity we expect from our leaders.
At first, it seemed like we were observing a card game known as Liar's Poker, but it turned out to be more like the children's game "War."
Dov Alfon of Haaretz started things out, throwing an apparently-promising card on the table. French news site Mediapart adds a fantastic photo to the mix, one so great it's hard to believe it wasn't enhanced via Photoshop. In the photo we see the handsome Arno Mimran, cool and calm, a child sitting on his lap. Next to him sits Benjamin Netanyahu, looking like a synthesis between Hugh Hefner and a vacationing retiree.
Netanyahu's shirt is slightly open, and one can only imagine what's going through his mind. Perhaps he's thinking of the life he could have had if his father wasn't Professor Benzion Netanyahu, but Jacques Mimran, Arno's dad (and quite a scoundrel in his own right).
Netanyahu's office doesn't wait. It throes its own card on the table: Nothing wrong happened. We never asked or received anything. Just a few weeks pas, and a response arrives from Paris.
Arno Mimran and PM Benjamin Netanyahu. Their conflicting stories aren't really necessary. (Photo: AFP, Reuters)
The French court, by way of judicial statements backed up by sworn testimony, throws the apparently-high card into the mix: €1 million, wire transferred, election campaign. All of this is in the evidence.
We won't drag readers through all of the changes in the relevant parties' stories, which are becoming more and more frequent, as the last word is yet to be said. Right now, it seems Netanyahu had connections with Mimran senior, as well as junior. They were a respected family back then, as the Netanyahu's say, but not today.
Thus is the fate of billionaires on whose tabs the Netanyahu's lived, but have fallen from grace since. Oh, and that €1 million? Netnayahu says It was more like 40,000. And that it was in dollars. And that it was for a non-profit fund that benefits the Jewish people.
But it didn't happen in 2002, as the current Prime Minister of Israel claims, but in 2003, with Netanyahu already in office as Finance Minister. And the family name was, at the time, already stained by an insider trading scandal, as well as French tax offenses. And these days, he's accused with the largest fraud in European history.
And if that's not enough, we have the empress Netanyahu's list of demands, which have to do with the needs of her two princes during the family's trip to Paris. A wonderful, ongoing, media celebration: Point, counterpoints, etc. But all of this is just silliness – finding out the truth here shouldn't be so difficult, and the multiple versions of the same stories are unnecessary.
It's pretty clear that everyone involved in this affair (and their lawyers and publicists) are lying, and still the truth can be readily found out. Even before the earliest date mentioned by anyone regarding these matters, two important events occurred: An anti-money-laundering bill was passed in the Knesset, and the Euro became the only currency allowed in European wire transfers (but was not exclusive for deals involving cash).
And so, the truth should be there, documented, in its entirety. The banks' computers hold records of all of Mimran's transfers, as well as those of Netanyahu and his fund.
The Netanyahus. 20 years of living the high life on other people's dime. (Photo: Haim Zach/GPO)
The Israeli State Comptroller's safe holds Netanyahu's financial statement, which he gave as a condition for his return to public service. Either it's a true statement, or its false. There's no third option. If anyone really wants to know the truth, official reports from Israeli and French banks can be produced within 24 hours, as well as from the Paris courts in which a judge declared that the official evidence in front of him shows the Netanyahu transfer.
But who really wants to know the simple, immediate truth? Netanyahu and Mimran certainly don't. Israeli journalists and politicians won't want to shorten the lifespan of their media sensation, which could go on entertaining us all for months. And what about the Israeli authorities? Well, the Police Commissioner, it turns out, was promised the directorship of the Shin Bet by Netanyahu. And the Attorney General, whose practically Netanyahu's family lawyer is unlikely to be any more nosey than the rest of us.
Let's admit it: We're exposed here. The wall that was supposed to protect us from corruption has been cracked open. The gatekeepers went on vacation with the PM, and we're left with no one to count on. And so, a case that could be solved in a single day will likely go one for months to come.
And still, the question lingers: If this really isn't a criminal matter, or it is but there's a statute of limitations involved, or any other law that would once again remove the danger of an indictment from hanging over the Netanyahu family's heads, what about ethics?
Morals, values, these things used to be given actual weight. There are things we expect our representatives not to do, because they're simply not done. This week, the aforementioned Alfon told fellow journalist Keren Neubach about Mimran's answer given to the French judge, when the former was asked to whom he gives his money, and why he gave the Netanyahu family so much of it, in addition to financing its luxurious vacation in the French Alps. I have a lot of money, Mimran said. Many people contact me, and I give. But I need the petitioner to entertain me.
How pathetic. How humiliating. The though of our Prime Minister getting these benefits because he "entertained" Mimran. How embarrassing, the thought of the man who leads us living off of others for 20 years now, getting free vacations, staying in fancy hotels, in return for entertaining his benefactors.
It's been said before that the combination of frugality and extravagance is what brought the Netanyahu family to the place in which they live at other people's expense – from Arno Mimran to Ron Dremer. But it's not enough. There are certainly cheep people who have more self respect than this. People who won't degrade themselves, even if it means giving up some of the pleasures of wealth.
State Comptroller Joseph Shapira. His vault holds Netanyahu's old financial statements. (Photo: Gil YOhanan)
Every day, it seems that what Netanyahu did, as a public servant or as a beneficiary of his public-service contacts, was degrade us all. If the date on the photo is correct, then the Monaco image was taken when Netanyahu was Finance Minister, and the word "corruption" cannot quite capture the full meaning of this.
The picture of Netanyahu in the red shirt, sitting next to a crooked billionaire, need to be seen in light of the actions he took as finance minister. His indifference to single mothers, his cruelty in cutting benefits aimed at childcare, elderly care, and Holocaust survivors. The Finance Minister vacationed in clubs and fancy hotels, and the elderly can go eat at soup kitchens and dig up desert from the trash outside.
20 years have passed since Netanyahu entered our lives in a big way. On June 18, we'll mark that momentous event that changed our country so thoroughly. We could try and explore Netanyahu's accomplishments as Prime Minister, from our standing in the international community, through the current state of violence, racism, polarization, and hatred that permeate our society, and to the anti-democratic legislation being put forth by public representatives. It's all been written already, though.
I made a list this week, checking the names of people who are heads of state today, who were also in that position in June 1996. Ready? President José Eduardo dos Santos of Angola, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran. Need I say more?
