Legal issues, Tuesday, September 20, 2005

The campaign financing issue arose in a Channel Ten report last night showing that Sharon was guest of honor at a $10,000 a couple dinner held at the New York home of a Sears Roebuck heiress Nina Rosenwald, where some $200,000 was raised for an npo meant to ‘get out the vote’ for Sharon whenever the election campaign formally begins. Complex Israeli election finance law says that an individual can donate up to $8,000 to a candidate, within nine months of the elections. General elections for the Knesset are so far slated for November 2006, so ostensibly, the donations made at the dinner were legitimate. But sniping reporters, pointing out that the Likud primaries are supposed to take place six months before the national elections, therefore must take place at the latest in April 2006. That means the contributions made at the dinner on Sunday in New York are illegitimate, because they fall within the nine-month period when there are caps on the amounts that can be donated.

What makes the entire matter of real interest is that Sharon has already barely squeaked out of prosecution for earlier campaign financing irregularities, essentially sacrificing his son, MK Omri Eitan, who will be prosecuted for raising money illegally for his father during the 1999 Likud primaries. Sharon used a ‘hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil’ defense in the matter of the campaign financing irregularities investigated by the police – who recommended he be prosecuted. The attorney general decided against prosecuting Sharon senior, instead going after Sharon’s sons, for their role in the fundraising.

In any case, it is clear that all three candidates in the Likud – Sharon, Netanyahu and Uzi Landau – have been raising money for their respective campaigns by appealing to American millionaires, raising questions about what those millionaires get for their money.

Sharon, by the way, is reportedly planning to announce he has no intention of forming a new party in case the Likud central committee goes with the challengers and votes next week in favor of advancing to as early as November the primaries inside the Likud for the party leadership. Shades of Germany, the polls are already in the realm of too close to call – after Netanyahu started with a huge lead over Sharon, like Merkel over Schroeder in Gerrmany. But Sharon’s managed to climb back in the polls of the 3,050 central committee members and the 150,000 rank and file Likud members. From now until next Monday, when the central committee is slated to vote, Sharon will work the phones and hold meetings with central committee members, trying to shore up his control over the party. But if he has lost control, and the central committee votes next week for early primaries, any promises he makes this week about staying in the Likud could be turned into confetti.

The other legal issue was whether there was enough evidence to prosecute policemen for the shooting deaths of 13 Israeli Arabs during riots that broke out in the Galilee in October 2000 to protest against police shootings of Arab demonstrators protesting Sharon’s controversial visit to the site holy to Jews as the site of the Temple Mount, and to Muslims as the Al Aqsa Mosque. The Justice Ministry’s elite Police Investigations Department announced yesterday that it could not make air-tight cases against any of the police suspected of shooting at the demonstrators. The PID went further, charging that the reason it could not make its cases was because the families of the victims refused to cooperate by allowing autopsies that would help identify the weapons that killed the victims.

Predictably, the decision outraged the Arab community, which called for a demonstration outside the Prime Minister’s Office and threatened hunger strikes and ‘if necessary, appeals to international courts,’ as Hadash MK Mohammed Barake said this morning on Israel Radio. No less predictably, the liberal Left lined up to charge it was ‘incomprehensible and outrageous,’ as Yossi Beilin said on Channel Two’s current events show last night, ‘that 13 people are killed and nobody is called to account. If this had happened overseas, and Jews were involved, we would have called it anti-Semitism.’

He was facing off against Uzi Landau, the flinty Rightist firebrand and a former police minister, who charged that the real culprits for the rioting were Arab MKs and other public figures, who incited the rioting of October 2000, and that any prosecution of police for obeying lawfully given orders, would undermine law and order in Israel. It was a dialogue of the deaf.

Islamic Movement leader Ra’ad Salah, recently released from prison after a plea bargain conviction for aiding and abetting Hamas-affiliated charities in the territories, issued a warning of his own: ‘If Israel continues to oppress its Muslim citizens, there won’t be an Israel in 20 years.’ That’s certainly not what Israelis want to hear from Arab citizens. It’s also not clear that it’s a widespread view among Israeli Arabs, who since 2000 have been caught between increasing ‘Palestinianization’ because of perceived and real injustices, and ‘Israelization,’ a desire for full integration in Israeli society. The PID decision certainly did damage to the little trust that remains between the Arab community and the Israeli establishment.

And in Vienna, 96-year-old Simon Wiesenthal passed away in his sleep after spending the last 60 years chasing down Nazis. His documentation center is said led to the arrests of more than 1,000 war criminals.

More news from today || Yesterday's situation (Archive)

© Today's Situation From Ariga, http://www.ariga.com by Robert Rosenberg; Feel free to pass this page on, including this line: Subscribe to get it daily by email -- or unsubscribe -- at http://www.ariga.com/signup.shtml >>>>>>>>>>RSS Feed

Feed Shark

Today's Situation || Yesterday's Situation