Lieberman’s Real Crime

The acquittal last week of Avigdor Lieberman of fraud charges is more than a legal victory for a politician who was hounded by police and prosecutors for 17 years. It is an indictment of a judicial system that turns prosecutors into persecutors and that seeks to subvert the power of the ballot by filing criminal indictments on the eve of elections. It also proves the hypocrisy of the media, which bans any criticism of the courts — unless they fail to toe the line of Israel’s secular-liberal elite.

Lieberman was charged with using his influence as foreign minister to appoint a veteran diplomat to the post of ambassador to Latvia, allegedly as a reward for the diplomat leaking to Lieberman details of another police investigation against him.

The case rested heavily on the testimony of Lieberman’s former deputy at the Foreign Ministry, Danny Ayalon. One would have thought that you don’t have to be a Magistrate’s Court judge to recognize that Ayalon only decided to testify after Lieberman decided to drop him from the Yisrael Beiteinu Knesset list, which Lieberman heads.

Moreover, what was the rush to file the indictment last December, in the midst of an electoral campaign? The indictment likely cost his party, which joined forces with the Likud, at least several Knesset seats. These seats were crucial when it came down to forming a government, as they could have curtailed the power of Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid and led to the formation of an entirely different coalition, one that would have spared the yeshivah world unprecedented and unfair budget cuts and the country anti-religious legislation on everything from conversion to marriage.

Considering that prosecutors had already spent 17 years on the various investigations, what would it have hurt to wait a few months, to let the democratic process play itself out? But the prosecution, which is notoriously left wing, suddenly discovered an urgency to indict, raising serious questions of political impropriety.

The behavior of the secular media also was, and continues to be, scandalous. Practically every newspaper, and every legal analyst, predicted that Lieberman was going to be convicted. On what grounds?

To be charitable, they observed the trial and were convinced that the prosecution had proven its case. To be less charitable, they were engaging in wishful thinking, in an attempt to influence the court by issuing their “verdicts” in advance.

Moreover, now that Lieberman has been acquitted, large swaths of the media continue to insist that he’s guilty. These views reflect arrogance — the media knows better than the attorney general — and a refusal to accept Lieberman’s complete exoneration in a court of law.

In Israel, if you are on the wrong side of the media, not only are you not entitled to a presumption of innocence until proven guilty, you aren’t entitled to a presumption of innocence even after being proven innocent.

While Lieberman has been found innocent of fraud and breach of trust, he is guilty of being politically incorrect, an even more heinous crime in the eyes of some. He is branded an “ultra-nationalist” for stating the obvious, that the peace talks with the Palestinians are going nowhere, and that Arab-populated areas in Israel should be joined to a Palestinian state in exchange for Israel keeping its communities in Yehudah and Shomron.

However, the punishment — 17 years of police and prosecution bullying — is surely disproportionate.

In the end, the prosecution and the media are the big losers in this trial, as their inability to concede defeat and their vigilantism against a politician who dares to speak his mind even if it contains “ultra-nationalist” views has seriously eroded public confidence.

The judicial system must reevaluate where it went wrong with the Lieberman case and draw lessons for the future.

As former Supreme Court President Aharon Barak, the biggest proponent of “everything is subject to judicial review,” wrote: “Not every failure is a crime. Not every error in judgment can be seen as a felony. Not every instance of ethically improper behavior deserves a prison sentence.”

Moreover, there must be a way to limit the length of criminal investigations that could unjustly silence certain political views and bankrupt those who couldn’t foot the bill for long-term quality legal defense.

This article appeared in print on page 44 of the November 13th, 2013 edition of Hamodia.