Israeli politicians (and their spouses) were not particularly well-behaved in 2015.
Or perhaps it was simply the year in which Israel’s political class was finally dragged in to account.
During the final week of the year former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was sentenced to 18 months in jail—he will be the first Israeli head of state to be imprisoned— former president Moshe Katzav, serving a seven year sentence for rape, was gearing up for a parole hearing and Sara Netanyahu, the first lady, was scheduled to be questioned by police regarding a series of unsavory events variously referred to as “Bottlegate” or “Furnituregate.”
Israeli journalists didn’t quite know where to turn. Amid exclamations about the national significance of a former prime minister convicted of corruption, one radio chat show host asked “does every country have as many -gates as we do?”
It was only ten days ago that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lost his deputy, Minister of Science and Technology Minister Silvan Shalom, who resigned when confronted [1]with over ten women accusing him of sexual assault.
And only three weeks before that, Yinon Magal, a legislator from the coalition party Jewish Home was forced to resign when he too faced charges of sexual assault.
This occurred six months after the Central Bureau of Statistics for Israel’s Ministry of Public
Security announced that 98% of victims of sexual harassment do not report the crimes to the police.
“The week in which a former Israeli prime minister was sentenced finally and irrevocably to prison is ending with the questioning under caution of the wife of the serving prime minister, on suspicion of receiving something fraudulently,” wrote Ha’aretz political analyst Yossi Verter, adding that it was “rather an unfortunate coincidence.”
“Israeli newspapers are chock full of reports on the scandals of 2015, which are sure to continue being 2016’s top stories,” announced the news website Times of Israel, in its own annual roundup.
Four senior Israel Police officers were investigated for sexual harassment and indecent acts against female colleagues, among them members of the vaunted Special Investigations Unit 443, the unit responsible for interrogating Sara Netanyahu.
Mrs. Netanyahu is accused of using public funds for private gain, in particular for the purchase of furniture and other domestic accoutrements that were allegedly bought for use in the official residence before being transported up north to Caesarea, where Israel’s first family owns a plush second home.
If the affair “ends up producing an indictment against Sara Netanyahu – fateful political scenarios could ensue,” Verter foresees. “The result could even be the end of the era of the fourth Netanyahu kingdom, however far-fetched that might sound.”
The notion is both far-fetched and all too easy to imagine. In Israel’s fragmented parliamentary system, Netanyahu maintains his coalition by a single vote. The day Shalom resigned, before his replacement was sworn in, the delicate matter of the government’s chances of surviving a surprise no-confidence motion hovered somewhat giddily over the conversations of Jerusalem veteran political observers.
Netanyahu’s tenuous hold on power is one factor rendering Israelis jittery. The other is a general sense of malaise emanating from a seemingly never-ending series of unsavory incidents.
As the claims against Shalom accumulated, his wife, the heiress and media mogul Judy Shalom Nir Mozes, tweeted a series of menacing but riveting posts threatening to divulge private data about his accusers. The country was simultaneously fascinated and disgusted.
Late night variety programs rang in the new year with analysts wondering whether the Shalom marriage or the government would last out 2016. (Yes to the first, no to the second, according to Channel 10’s master seer, Sana.)
When Amir Ohana, the man who replaced Shalom in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, was sworn in, a bizarre tussle erupted between Netanyahu and opposition lawmakers who disputed the prime minister’s description of Ohana as the first openly gay man to be victorious in party primary elections. In the midst of the sparing and preening, fourteen members of an ultra-Orthodox party skulked out of the chamber to protest the sexual orientation of Ohana, 38, a new father to twins, security hawk, attorney and former member of Israel’s security forces.
During the same laden last week of 2015, Yair Ramati, the admired director of Israel’s missile defense program, was humiliatingly and all too publicly fired from his post after leading Israel through its first successful test of the Arrow 3 anti-mid-range missile system.
The cause for his dismissal was a security breach whose gravity is as yet unknown: he was caught storing unauthorized classified documents on his personal computer.
Ramati, an international authority on rocket engineering and longtime Israeli military expert, awoke on a Sunday morning to discover he had been unceremoniously sacked [4].
The matter was so clumsily mishandled that the Minister of Defense, Moshe Ya’alon, felt obliged to issue a strange statement to the media, in which he ostensibly explained to Ramati the reasons for his dismissal and apologized for the poor form with which it was undertaken.
“It is not sufficient for us to express our great admiration for your accomplishments,” Ya’alon purportedly told Ramati in a private meeting, according to the statement. “Your contribution to the public and to the security of the State of Israel has been immense. If only it was possible to inform the citizens of what you have done for them.”
“Unfortunately,” the didactic Ya’alon continued, according to the statement, “the circumstances demanded that we bring your work at the Defense Department to an end. The decision was taken with a very heavy heart, but we had no option. We have to be very serious and strict with regard data security, particularly when it involved a person in your position who does not abide by the rules – even if without evil intent.”
Inpatient Israelis augured in the New Year with a single message for their elected and appointed leaders: please behave.