
Israeli Police Recommend Indicting Netanyahu in Telecom Case - jbegley
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/12/02/world/middleeast/ap-ml-israel-netanyahu.html
======
beagle3
Israel has some of the best/worst politicians money can buy - but it is not
shy about putting them in jail. A previous PM (Olmert) spent time in jail, as
did a previous president (Katzav, this is a ceremonial job, with queen-of-
england style responsibilities) and quite a few ministers.

~~~
Waterluvian
Unfortunately that hints to me that risk of jail doesn't solve the problem.

~~~
keyme
Yup. The current minister of interior has already been in jail once, for
offenses committed as the minister of interior (10 years or so ago).

------
ryanlol
>"The police recommendations regarding me and my wife don't surprise anyone,"
Netanyahu said in a statement. "These recommendations were decided upon and
leaked even before the investigation began."

Isn't this entirely normal for criminal investigations? First you decide that
someone is probably doing something bad, then you investigate and indict?

~~~
dogma1138
No, the investigation is performed in order to decide if there is sufficient
evidence to recommend an indictment.

The investigation is the part in which they collect the evidence, witness
statements and perform a review of the case.

Then they pass their recommendation for a judicial review which would review
the case and take into consideration the recommendation of the investigators
and decide if there is sufficient evidence to proceed with an indictment or
not, then it goes to the state attorney which has the final say.

If indicted the PM can appeal to the parliament within 30 days to request
immunity, however an immunity as far as I know never been granted and over the
past few decades Israel has indicted and prosecuted several high ranking
politicians including former PMs so their judicial system seems to work pretty
well.

The statement was referring to the claim that the recommendation text was
leaked prior to the investigation being completed apparently the text was very
simmilar to some leaked documents form 2 years ago.

Essentially over the past few years every month or so there was a leak that
said an indictment will be recommended sometimes accompanied by the text of
the recommendation, but this time it was an official recommendation.

Likely they had the legal text recommending an indictment worked on before the
investigation was completed as it likely would demand quite a bit of work and
approval to meet the legal nuances required for such a document.

------
onetimemanytime
>> _The case revolves around suspicions that confidants of Netanyahu promoted
regulations worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the Bezeq telecom company
in exchange for positive coverage of the prime minister on Bezeq 's subsidiary
news website, Walla._

If true, lifetime ban from politics and 20 years in jail. This is messing with
the core of democracy--and by using state /people's money. Those hundreds of
millions in "gifts" are a cost to Israeli people.

~~~
smsm42
Wait, isn't that what every populist politician doing every day - doing
something beneficial to an interest group X in exchange for being praised by
this interest group and thus raising his chances of being elected again? If a
politician recommends a subsidy to the solar industry, knowing he would be
positively covered in New York Times and MSNBC, or, alternatively, proposes an
increased military budget, knowing Fox News and Rush Limbaugh would praise him
for that - is that something that one has to be jailed for? I am afraid if
we'd do that then it'd make most sense to just convert the Capitol Hill to a
jail, and the same with every state legislature, because everybody there would
be jailed anyway.

------
tracer4201
Question for any Israelis-

My view of that region has been that in general, Israel is trying to do the
right thing, although inidividual actors might attack Palestinian civilians
and then get court martial. Palestinian leadership is broken with competing
Hamas and Palestinian Authority with open or at least covert support of
terrorism.

How are Israel’s politics internally? I fear an Israeli leader who is corrupt
and doesn’t care for Israeli people or loss of Palestinian civilians could
very easily take the Trump path.

It would be easy to blame Palestinians for every problem, just as Trump blames
Hispanics, Muslims, immigrants (legal or illegal) or some other ethnic group
inside Israel to unite the people with electoral power while the leadership
gets away with corruption or outright war crimes in the name of defense.

This is not meant to be a Israel v. Palestine conversation, but just about
Israel’s internal politics. Just want to learn.

~~~
golergka
Internally it's the same right vs left conflict that you see in many other
westernized countries, only magnified by the conflict. But in a very strange
and un-hawkish move, after 500 rockets have been fired on Israel in 24 hours,
Bibi didn't order any serious retaliation and deescalated instead. Coalition
broke down, so now we're up for election on our hands, and Liberman, who
resigned in protest against this decision, have seemingly got a lot of points.

However, I'm very curious about Bibi, because his main focus for the last few
years have been international relations. His frequent visits, and building a
lot of ties with muslim and muslim-friendly countries didn't win him a lot
support domestically, but it may just be the key to solving the conflict.
Especially in this recent situation, there are strong rumours that the main
reason he decided not to allow escalation was his desire to demonstrate his
reliableness to other middle eastern powers that got tired of Hamas and Muslim
Brotherhood in general.

There's a lot of talk about how corrupt Bibi and his family is; but you have
to take it in context, compared to western countries. All Israeli PMs (except
for Gold Meir) have always been highly decorated combat military veterans, who
have gone into harm's way again and again to serve their country and protect
their countrymen. So while it's conceivable that they would give favourable
government contracts to their friends and get a couple of millions reached
from shady dealings, I don't think that a person with such history wouldn't
care for his people.

------
yaakov34
A slowly developing putsch by the Israeli bureacracy against the elected
politicians. Welcomed by those who want those politicians gone, not welcomed
by the rest.

I would instead think ahead and decide how much I like the idea of rule by
bureacracy vs. elections.

~~~
techntoke
The rest do want him gone as well. He is as corrupt as Trump.

~~~
yaakov34
Given that he is at the peak of his popularity and his coalition is expected
to win reelection in a landslide - I doubt that the people you've been talking
to are a representative sample.

