From bad to worse

He promised us a new, clean police, spoke in terms of a revolution and an earthquake, and patiently waited for the publication of the Zeiler Commission findings. He had plenty of time to search for a suitable candidate to the post of police chief. Only a blind man could not see that Moshe Karadi's head was about to roll.

Despite this, when the moment of truth arrived, it turned out that the real earthquake was in fact created by Avi Dichter himself. Instead of pulling a real rabbit out of his hat, instead of delivering on his pledges and putting an honest officer at the police's helm, Dichter chose to entrust this sick, bleeding organization in the hands of Yaakov Ganot, who the High Court of Justice harshly criticized back in 1997.

In the mid 1990s, Ganot was the Northern District's commander and became entangled in dubious ties with a contractor, which led to the launching of a criminal investigation. He was charged with accepting bribes and acts of fraud. The Nazareth District Court acquitted him, but not before it criticized his actions, and in the verdict hinted that in one case there was very little distance between an acquittal and a conviction.

Among other things, the court ruled: "The theory presented by the accused is on the thin line between reasonable and unreasonable, and in order to accept it one needs to stretch to the maximum the tests of reasonability and logic."

Supreme Court Justices Yaakov Kedmi, Eliezer Goldberg, and Yitzhak Zamir, were even harsher and sharper.

In one case, where it was proven that Ganot exploited a police officer who was not his friend for his private needs (among other things he ordered him to serve as his son's babysitter, and the policeman testified that he was scared to refuse,) the justices wrote: "We're not talking about absurdity, but rather, about the integrity of police officers and the need to prevent them from harassing their subordinates. In such cases, the number of cases adds the corrupt touch."

Lavish party

However, in this story the judges made do with subjecting Ganot to disciplinary action, while in the other two cases they decided to acquit the accused because of reasonable doubt. They did so even though they found grounds for the arguments of the prosecution and emphasized that they left the acquittal intact only because of the custom not to intervene in factual findings. They had mercy on him.

The great controversy among the judges was in yet another charge, which described a large party organized and financed for Ganot by one of the wealthiest contractors in Nazareth.

The party took place in the contractor's home, and according to the verdict it was proven that "this wasn't a modest party for friends, but rather, a true celebration at the contractor's expense and at his home for the entire police top brass. And this, with the contractor having no personal connection to the guests and invitees."

It was also proven that the contractor enjoyed special treatment from the police in a brawl involving his relatives, that this preferential treatment was offered on Ganot' orders, and that the contractor received the special status of "beloved district member."

Justice Yaakov Kedmi wrote harsh things against the accused that would have led a regular police officer to be kicked out of the police immediately, and decided to convict him in a minority opinion.

Yet what was written and exposed in the trial – embarrassing stories about the district commander's conduct – did not bother Minister Dichter when he made Ganot his great news for residents of the country. He entrusted the war against crime and corruption in the hands of an officer who was suspected, indicted, acquitted, but still tainted. Yaakov Ganot is the new police, Avi Dichter-style. He's the clean hands.