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DAN IZENBERG:
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Moshe-gate

Someone will have to pay for the wiretapping charges leveled by the attorney-general. The question is who

One might be excused for thinking that the controversy over Police Cmdr. Moshe Mizrahi’s actions in the wiretapping of the National Union Party’s Avigdor Lieberman, has purely to do with issues of human rights, society’s need to apprehend ever-more sophisticated criminals, and the limits of the law.

But like most things in Israel, this is too lofty an assumption. And like most things in Israel, the controversy over Mizrahi’s actions in the wiretapping affair inevitably also turns out to be a matter of politics.

This became apparent during last week’s Knesset Law Committee debate on the Mizrahi affair in the presence of Attorney-General Elyakim Rubinstein.

Rubinstein spent almost an hour trying to explain to committee members his recommendation to relieve Mizrahi of his post. He charged that Mizrahi had allegedly collected information about Lieberman in excess of court orders in 1998 and 1999 allowing the police to wiretap Lieberman’s phone. Police suspected Lieberman of having connections with Russian underworld figures.

At the time, Mizrahi was commander of the National Serious and International Crimes Investigation Unit.

For some reason, the opinions of the MKs who participated in the meeting split almost perfectly along party lines. The right-wing MKs, including committee chairman Michael Eitan, Roni Bar-On, Yuli Edelstein, and Gideon Sa’ar (Likud), Nissim Ze’ev (Shas), Eliezer Cohen and Yuri Stern (National Union) and Nissan Slomianski (NRP), blasted Mizrahi’s conduct and either backed Rubinstein or charged that his report was too soft.

MKs Yossi Sarid (Meretz), Ophir Pines (Labor) and Etti Livni (Shinui) were either critical of Rubinstein’s recommendation or said they wanted to study a report submitted by three senior state prosecutors who had disagreed with him. The prosecutors included State Attorney Edna Arbel, deputy state attorney for Criminal Affairs, Nava Ben-Or, and Southern District prosecutor Yasca Leibowitz.

Avraham Burg (Labor) was the only MK on the Left who blasted Mizrahi’s behavior. He was also the only member of the committee who refused to discuss the Mizrahi case with The Jerusalem Post.

IN JANUARY 2002, Rubinstein ordered the Police Investigations Department to investigate Mizrahi, after allegations surfaced that he had transcribed telephone conversations of members of Mizrahi’s family, including his wife and daughter. The court order had prohibited police from transcribing any conversations unrelated to the police investigation.

By the time of the Mizrahi investigation, he had already become a controversial figure. He vigorously pursued important political investigations including the allegations that former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu had paid his mover out of state funds for private work and that he had taken home hundreds of gifts given to him in his official capacity and therefore belonging to the state.

Mizrahi was also a dominant force in the investigation and conviction of Ya’acov Nimrodi, one of the wealthiest and most powerful figures in the country.

The secret investigation into the Russian Mafia and its alleged links with Israeli politicians pitted Mizrahi against Lieberman. The confrontation between these two tough and relentless men turned out to be a clash of titans.

In April, 1999, just before the wiretapping of Lieberman came to an end after he was elected to the Knesset, a newspaper reported that Lieberman had accused Mizrahi of being an “an anti-Semitic racist who is causing great harm to Israel. Anti-Semites in the former Soviet Union ought to give him a prize as the ’darling of the Anti-Semites’ because of his leaks against Jewish businessmen from the former Soviet Union.”

He also charged that Mizrahi and other senior police officials “are now trying to distract attention from their repeated failures in needless investigations and to cover up the tendentious leaks from investigations aimed against people from a certain side of the political map.”

From the beginning, therefore, Lieberman and his supporters claimed that Mizrahi was out to get them because they belonged to the Right.

But Lieberman is far more radical in his criticism of the country’s law enforcement institutions than most politicians, including those on the right wing of the spectrum. Therefore, it might still have been expected that the majority of the MKs would have evaluated Mizrahi’s actions in the wiretapping episode on the merits of the case.

But that did not happen.

ACCORDING TO Slomianski, the Mizrahi case has proven that the leftist MKs are hypocrites prepared to dump their alleged values for political gain.

“The Left is always talking about human rights and blaming us for not being sensitive enough about them,” says Slomianski. “Logic would have it that they should have raised the alarm over Mizrahi’s behavior and we should have said it’s not so bad. Instead, the world is topsy-turvy and the Left defends Mizrahi’s actions.”

Slomianski believes that what really interests the left-wing politicians is not the fate of Mizrahi but of Sharon. According to him, they are afraid that if Mizrahi is dumped, there will be no one to pursue the investigations against Sharon in the Cyril Kern and Greek Island affairs. “Sharon is the target and they will oppose anything that gets in the way of deposing him,” says Slomianski.

Gilad Erdan (Likud) says that from his experience, he knows that Mizrahi is out to get Lieberman. He told the Law Committee last week that he was once hauled in for questioning by the police. Mizrahi came into the room and told him that he was not interested in Erdan but would hold him in jail unless he provided information about Lieberman.

“He impressed me as being a man who behaves like a criminal and is willing to use any means to achieve his ends,” says Erdan.

If that’s the case, why doesn’t the Left also condemn Mizrahi?

“They have double standards,” Erdan says. “They don’t demand the same things of themselves or the Palestinians as they do of us.”

Unlike leftist behavior, he adds, he has condemned the leak by Central District prosecutor Anat Savidor about the Greek Island investigation even though it was meant to cast a good light on Prime Minister Sharon.

Erdan charges that Mizrahi is biased in favor of the Left.

“In 1999, Mizrahi saw that Netanyahu was going to lose the election and that the Left would come to power,” Erdan told the Post. “He understood that if he brought Lieberman’s head on a platter, he would gain great favor and advance his career.

“It’s a fact that when Shlomo Ben-Ami was internal security minister, he used a little-known Mandatory law to force Police Insp.-Gen. Shlomo Aharonishky to appoint Mizrahi head of the Investigations Unit.”

ELIEZER COHEN thinks the leftist MKs support Mizrahi because “they are stupid.” Cohen ridiculed the argument by liberal MK Etti Livni (Shinui) that Mizrahi had not actually used the transcrips of political or intimate nature to defame Lieberman. He is convinced that the police continued to wiretap Lieberman long after May 17, 1999, when the police say they stopped listening to his conversations after he was elected to the Knesset.

According to Cohen, the media reported the contents of two intimate conversations, allegedly leaked by Mizrachi, that took place in the National Union offices. In one, a private conversation between Lieberman and Cohen, the two discussed Lieberman’s daughter’s approaching enlistment in the army. The next day the report appeared in a newspaper. The incident occurred two years ago.

“How did Mizrahi know?” says Cohen. “He eavesdropped.”

“There is nothing worse than listening to private conversations. The Left is supposed to be liberal. Why are they against Rubinstein’s report? Because they want Mizrahi to stay where he is.”

On the other side of the spectrum, Ophir Pines agrees that Mizrahi went too far in his wiretapping actions, but attributes this to his “overenthusiasm.” He denies that Mizrahi is politically biased.

“He is apolitical,” says Pines. “It is hard for politicians to control him. He has made many enemies among the Right and the Left. But it is the Right that is in power.”

Pines says he has no doubt that Rubinstein has not recommended relieving Mizrahi of his post for political reasons. But he feels that the attorney-general should have left the case to state attorney Edna Arbel because he was personally involved in it, since he was responsible for supervising Mizrahi’s actions.

SARID TOLD the Post he supported Mizrahi because the senior officer was in the forefront of the fight against government corruption. In ordinary circumstances, he says, he might be more concerned with the infringement of human rights.

“But the circumstances are not ordinary. We are in a situation in which there is increasing corruption in government. Corruption is Israel’s number one enemy. Those guilty of corruption don’t cooperate with the police. Sometimes the investigators need to knock down walls with their heads. For that you need a tough guy. In this fight between cops and robbers, I’m on the side of the cops.”

Sarid says members of the Right oppose Mizrahi because they believe he is out to get them.

“That is not so,” he says. “But what can you do when it is Sharon who is under suspicion of corruption and not me?”

During last week’s meeting, the liberal and leftist MKs insisted that the committee hear the opinion of Arbel, who is strongly against punishing Mizrahi. In deference to Rubinstein’s senior position, Arbel will apparently not attend the committee to present her opinion (which, in fact, is already well-known.) But even if she did, she would only be preaching to the convinced. The MKs’ made up their minds long ago and do not care to be confused with the facts.

The end of discretion The simmering tensions between Attorney-General Elyakim Rubinstein and State Attorney Edna Arbel erupted into the open last week in a blistering letter that Rubinstein sent to Arbel.

The two have worked together since Rubinstein was appointed to his position in 1997. They have not always seen eye to eye and there have been reports in the past of problematic relations between the two. But if there is one word to describe the usual conduct of affairs in the Justice Ministry, it is “discretion.”

The two have kept their disagreements to themselves and, in the case of an investigation into allegations against Binyamin Netanyahu, they politely agreed to disagree in public, on Rubinstein’s terms, about whether or not to file charges against the former prime minister.

Not this time.

Last week, Rubinstein wrote to Arbel that he was “disappointed and hurt” because she allegedly went over his head and submitted an opinion sharply differing from his own to Police Inspector Shlomo Aharonishky regarding the case of Cmdr. Moshe Mizrahi, head of the Police Investigations Department.

In a 64-page report released last week, Rubinstein recommended relieving Mizrahi of his post for having allegedly exceeded the terms of a court permit allowing him to wiretap politicians Avigdor Lieberman and Michael Gorolovsky, and businessman David Appel.

“The findings of the investigation… show that Cmdr. Mizrahi’s conduct in the wiretapping of Appel, Lieberman and Gorolovsky lacked discretion to a marked degree,” wrote Rubinstein. “They paint a picture of walking close to the borderline of legality. Those who walk close to the line are in danger of crossing it and we must make sure this doesn’t happen.”

In last week’s law committee meeting, Rubinstein tried to play down the gravity of his disagreement with Arbel. He told the MKs that the two agreed on everything regarding the case except the question of whether or not Mizrahi should be punished.

Arbel’s opinion, which was sent to Rubinstein and Aharonishky and leaked to the press, made it clear exactly how misleading Rubinstein’s description of the situation between the two actually was.

“We do not accept many of the assessments and criticisms contained in your decision, as you know from our many long conversations and the written opinions we have conveyed to you,” wrote Arbel and her deputy for criminal affairs, Nava Ben-Or. “On the basis of your decision, the authorized officials are meant to consider whether to draw mmand/administrative conclusions on the personal level to the point of relieving Mizrahi of his duties. Our position is that there is no justification for drawing such a far-reaching and harsh conclusion leading to his dismissal.”

Rubinstein, stung by criticism of his decision that went beyond the walls of the Justice Ministry, accused Arbel of violating the hierarchical relationship between them, in which he is the superior and she his subordinate.

Justice Minister Yosef Lapid tried to patch up matters between the two, but the results were lame at best. Neither Rubinstein nor Arbel were prepared to discuss the sulha afterwards, and even Lapid had to admit that each of them continued to believe he or she was right and the other wrong.

In practical terms, the open quarrel between the two at this juncture hardly matters. Rubinstein will soon be leaving his post and, unless he and Arbel both end up on the Supreme Court, they will not have to work together again.

Nevertheless, the rift cannot help but tarnish the image of two of the most solid, responsible and discreet offices in the government, whose occupants are supposed to make news by their decisions rather than their personal relations.