The bill submitted Monday to abolish the offenses of fraud and breach of trust marks a new low for brazenness, after many shameful bills submitted by coalition lawmakers.
The governing coalition wants to do away with one of the main offenses in Israel's criminal code, designed to protect the public from elected officials and civil servants who use their official capacity to further their personal interests. It is also the same offense for which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been indicted in all of the cases against him.
That is no coincidence. That is the real motivation for the shameless three lawmakers who submitted the legislation – coalition chair Ofir Katz; Simcha Rothman, the chair of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee; and MK Michel Buskila, who again have been revealed to be the faithful servants of the country's No. 1 defendant.
As expected, the bill is packaged in victimization. The proponents argue that the law enforcement system "polices" elected officials through a vague offense that violates the principle of legality. Indeed over the years, criticism has been leveled at a certain ambiguity in the language of the offense, but the answer has never been to dispense with it altogether. To the contrary, amendments have been proposed to more carefully define the crime as conflict of interest and improper use of governmental power. The new bill does not propose amending anything but rather repealing the law. In doing so, it creates a gaping loophole that will invite anyone who holds authority to exploit it.
The claim that laws against bribery, embezzlement and money laundering are enough to combat corruption ignores a simple reality, namely, that not all corruption is "something for something." Sometimes it involves the abuse of power for the benefit of cronies, friends or foreign interests, without envelopes of cash and without evidence of the transaction. This is precisely why the crime of breach of trust exists.
The political context is no less serious. The removal from the penal code of an offense would be retroactive, which means that existing charges against those standing trial would be emptied of their content. If Netanyahu were to be excluded from the law, it would be seen as a personal legislation, strengthening claims of selective enforcement and demands for a pardon. Simply put, this is a move that jeopardizes the very possibility of bringing the prime minister to justice.
And not just him. The coalition has a number of elected officials suspected of or under indictment for fraud and breach of trust – from David Bitan, the chair of the Knesset Economic Affairs Committee, through serving ministers, to employees at the Prime Minister's Office. As MK Gilad Kariv said, the bill's ultimate goal is immunity for Netanyahu and freedom of action for criminal ministers.
Next week, the proposal will be brought up for discussion in the ministerial committee for legislation. Since it is clear to everyone that there is not a shred of public responsibility left among its members, there is no reason to expect that they will do the right thing, stop the legislation and throw the proposal where it belongs, into the waste bin of initiatives designed to legalize corruption.
The above article is Haaretz's lead editorial, as published in the Hebrew and English newspapers in Israel.