"Elyakim Rubinstein is a victim - a victim of the Bar-On-Hebron affair, which plucked him out of the District Court and landed him in the attorney general's seat; a victim of his character, which is more suited to the role of adviser, in the narrow sense of the word, than to that of a legal spearhead, as is called for by the Israeli reality; a victim of the most prominent of his predecessors, primarily Meir Shamgar and Aharon Barak, in the face of whom he pales and is pushed onto the side of the weakest of legal advisers such as Yosef Harish; a victim of the expectation from him to prove his ability to make it all the way to the Supreme Court; and perhaps also a victim of the "seven-year itch," an incessant stimulation that befell him already last year, in his sixth year on the job. "No doubt that the enlightened public was delighted to read Oren's blows below the gartel directed at Elyakim Rubinstein. The "Ten Commandments" jibe was especially witty. Oren goes on to praise our hero Glatt-Berkovich:"Rubinstein is not a bad man. He has never been known to transgress any of the Ten Commandments. Guilty is the director who cast a supporting actor into a role too big for him, a starring role. "
"The netting of attorney Liora Glatt-Berkovich gave him, as it gave Sharon, a tactical victory with an inherent strategic defeat. He has delivered a critical blow to the general prosecution, at the head of which he stands."
"Had Ariel Sharon and the remaining suspects and accused, who are keeping the State Prosecution and courts busy, been friendly to their interrogators and had they cooperated with them, as Glatt-Berkovich did, there would have been no need for complex investigations. "Maariv says that it was the police that managed to catch lawyer Liora, as we mentioned above. In any case, on the very same day, January 23, 2003 , Ha'aretz published an editorial entitled Obstruction of the right to know . Here are some gems from the editorial:"Glatt-Berkovich did not play the innocent; she didn't exercise her right to remain silent so as not to incriminate herself; and she did not seek the help of lawyers and media advisers prior to the investigation. Without her confession, the investigation team, comprising her colleagues from the Justice Ministry, would have come up with "circumstantial evidentiary material," without a motive, without a hint of criminal intent."
"She spared the team the bother, which generally ends in the closing of investigations due to the lack of guilt, when not dealing with regular citizens, but rather the top brass, whose sweat in the interrogation rooms stains the white of their collars."
"In Glatt-Berkovich's position, prime ministers, ministers and mayors would have sat looking doe-eyed at their interrogators. "
"Rubinstein hurried to cast doubt on the State Prosecution (and police) already at the beginning of the inquiry, appointing a Shin Bet security service agent to monitor them, until the High Court of Justice stepped in to put an end to that. If he suspected a mutual cover-up, it turned out he was wrong: Even without the Shin Bet, the Justice Department people managed to catch their colleague."
"The judicial temperament and reasoning displayed by Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein in the wake of the leak about the investigation into the loan Ariel Sharon's family received from Cyril Kern was very worrisome and deeply disappointing to all those concerned about freedom of speech and for whom the rules of democracy are precious. Rubinstein's manner in the affair, from the moment he decided to investigate the leak, through his decision to involve the Shin Bet, to the authorization he gave to summon reporter Baruch Kra (who reported on the investigation against Sharon in Ha'aretz), is testimony to a grave failure of judgment on his part to distinguish between the wheat and the chaff, compounded by a distorted understanding of the role of the press in a democracy. ""From the start there was no justification for an investigation to discover the source of the leak: the issue under discussion is not a highly classified state secret, and the publication caused no harm to the national interest. With those facts in mind, there is no other conclusion than the investigation to discover the leak was meant to please the prime minister, who was personally harmed by the publicity. Even if the argument is made that the publicity harms the actual investigation, the decision to put all the emphasis on exposing the source of the information instead of accelerating the investigation of the loan, demonstrates a faulty order of priorities. "
Liora Glatt-Berkovich is a white-collar Yigal Amir.The public prosecutors are politically motivated? Ma Pitom!!! Liora Glatt-Berkovich is a white-collar Yigal Amir? This is an outrage!!! We at CRAP are fuming! Why doesn't Elyakim Rubinstein investigate Dr. Berel Dov Lerner for incitement?!"In today's Ha'aretz editorial, "Obstruction of the right to know", the left's desperate political situation has led Ha'aretz to completely disregard its own much-touted devotion to the rule of law. For God's sake, a senior prosecutor chose to influence the outcome of a national election by shamelessly revealing details of an on-going investigation! By her own admission, she did not even do this because of anything pertaining to the matter she was investigating! She simply wanted to abuse her power in order to profoundly affect Israel's foreign and defense policies in a way that is unavailable to law-abiding citizens. Liora Glatt-Berkovich is a white-collar Yigal Amir."
"With all due respect to press freedom, one would hope that Ha'aretz would have something to say about the terrible damage that has been inflicted on the rule of law by this criminal. A grave taboo has been broken. We can only pray that Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein's decisive action has averted catastrophe. Otherwise, from now on, we will never be sure again whether the work of public prosecutors is not politically motivated."
"Ah, yes, you will say, but this crime was not motivated by politics, it was motivated by "ideology" or "morality". Does anyone waste their breath to ask whether Yigal Amir's treachery was "politically motivated" or "ideologically motivated"? Why does Ha'aretz devote space to this meaningless question?"
Copyright 2003 by The Church of Rabin And Peace.
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