Moshe Negbi

Winner of The Church of Rabin And Peace Award




Moshe Negbi: Our Prophet Of Enlightened Democracy

Moshe Negbi! The name says it all! Moshe Negbi is the Israel Broadcasting Authority's legal commentator and a senior lecturer at Hebrew University. He is a pious hassid of Supreme Court Justice Aharon Barak. He is our ubiquitous prophet of enlightened democracy. You can hear or read his holy words everywhere: on television, on radio, in the newspapers. There are few people in the enlightened public who have done more to further the ideals and goals of the Church of Rabin And Peace than Moshe Negbi. Even if we had 100 gigabytes of memory for our holy web site, we would not be able to list all of Mr. Negbi's accomplishments. Therefore, the CRAP spiritual advisory board is pleased to honor Moshe Negbi with the coveted Church of Rabin And Peace Award.

Enlightened McCarthyism

Moshe Negbi wrote one of the of the greatest articles in the history of New Middle Eastern journalism, entitled The Murderers Are Still Free. The article appeared in the holy Ha'Aretz newspaper on the holy date of November 4, 2002, the seventh anniversary of the death of our master Yitzchak Rabin. Here you can see how one can use enlightened McCarthyism to besmirch a whole group of individuals without having to fear a libel suit. Moshe Negbi puts forward the true opinion of CRAP with regards to the role of "the rabbis" in Rabin's murder. Here is an excerpt from his beautiful prose:
"It is vital to remember this, because Rabin's determination and courage have, disastrously, disappeared from our politics, while the authorities' feebleness regarding those who made Rabin a legitimate target still remains. The proof lies not just in the attorney-general's restraint toward inciting rabbis like Zalman Melamed, but also - perhaps mainly - in the awful fact that even the inciting rabbis of seven and more years ago - those who issued din rodef (religious license to kill a fellow Jew) against Rabin, have not yet been punished and are still free to incite and foment rebellion."

"It is imperative to read in the Rabin memorial ceremonies the explicit statements made by Yigal Amir on that cursed November 4: "Without the halakhic ruling or the din rodef which were issued against Rabin by a number of rabbis that I know of, I would have had difficulty murdering him; such a murder must have backing; if I had no backing ... I would not have acted" (the Shamgar Committee Report, page 89). "

"It is important to stress: The rabbis who gave Yigal Amir "backing" with their rulings are not "merely" inciters and rebellion mongers; they are murderers in the full sense of the word. Every first-year law student learns that one who incites or solicits another to commit a crime, which is then committed, is a full accomplice - legally and morally - to the crime. In other words, those rabbis are the murderers of the prime minister just like Yigal Amir, but instead of rotting in prison like him, they are free and probably happy, too. Indeed, from their point of view they have committed the perfect murder, which has also paid off. Now it will probably be impossible to find anyone who dares make peace with the support of the Arab votes. Nobody will want to end up like Sadat or Rabin. "
The enlightened person may ask himself: Who are the rabbis that Yigal Amir is talking about? Why should I believe Yigal Amir, after all someone who murders would not think twice of lying? If Moshe Negbi knows who these rabbis are, then why doesn't he name them? Why doesn't he register a complaint with the police? If he does not know who the rabbis are then who is he accusing of being accomplices in our master's murder? This is what we call enlightened McCarthyism!

Lending Support To Liora Glatt-Bercovich

Yisrael Meidad and Eli Pollak documented our hero's courageous defense of Liora Glatt-Bercovich in their weekly column in The Jerusalem Post entitled Media Spin-off:
"That Baruch Kra, the Ha'aretz reporter who published the scoop was being investigated by the police for obstruction of justice, shocked the media. Ha'Aretz and central media figures such as Razi Barkai, Moshe Negbi, Carmit Guy, Amnon Abramovitz and others took immediate steps to put their own special spin on the story, to repair the damage, and deflect the focus away from the alleged criminal behavior of someone who helped them. They were looking out for their own interests."

"Interviewed on the Galatz Army Radio, Civil Service Commissioner Shmuel Hollander told Barkai that passing information to an unauthorized person is a criminal act. Barkai responded by saying, "that's what we live on in the media. Otherwise, we would all be unemployed." In other words, everyone must abide by the law - except journalists. Moshe Negbi even asserted that Ms. Glatt-Bercovitch was not guilty of anything since she was probably acting in good faith to reveal a crime. Negbi, is the legal commentator for Kol Yisrael and Channel One TV. That he "knew" that Sharon was guilty, and not just a suspect, didn't seem to faze him or his editors at the station. "

"Negbi intimated that Rubinstein was covering up his own failings and displaying signs of a confused value-system. He theorized that Rubinstein was trying to cover up his own errors by going after Kra. The state-sponsored radio was kind enough to "balance" Negbi's comments with those of advocate Mibi Mozer, counsel for Ha'Aretz. He attacked the Attorney-General for displaying faulty judgment, accusing him of attempting to intimidate journalists and, to quote the official Ha'Aretz reaction, undoubtedly authorized by Mozer, of striking "a blow at the right of Israeli citizens to receive vital information, at the freedom of the press, and the foundations of democracy." Ha'Aretz accused the Attorney-General for not investigating the allegations of corruption when the leak itself proved that just the opposite was true! "
It is indeed comforting to see how Moshe Negbi and his enlightened friends gave their support to Liora and Baruch!

Courageously Ignoring the Facts

Our hero Moshe Negbi may have reached the high spiritual level of "courageously ignoring the facts", a level that has been attained only by the most pious. He is an item about Negbi that appeared in the loathsome Arutz 7 News Service on February 6, 1998:

JUDGE COMPLAINS THAT COMMENTATOR IGNORES THE FACTS

Tel Aviv District Court Justice Amnon Strashnov has submitted a sharp complaint to the Press Council against the prominent left-wing legal affairs commentator Moshe Negbi.

Strashnov says that Negbi, who provides legal commentary for the Israel Television, Voice of Israel Radio, and the Maariv newspaper, systematically ignores the facts in giving his opinions and violates the rules of journalistic etiquette.

Strashnov says that Negbi gives the impression that he barely reads the legal opinions on which he comments.

Two and a half years ago, Arutz-7 was the first to report that Negbi had been discharged from his position as Military Prosecutor in the IDF because he was suspected of having purposely destroying an important legal document.
Like I said, this is an indication of a very high level of piety. Very few people reach this level, and if Strashnov's complaint was found to be justified, then Mr. Negbi is one of them!

Dankner's Song of Praise

Maariv editor Amnon Dankner published a column on August 28, 2003 in Maariv entitled The Righteous Bolshevist, a veritable song of praise of our hero Moshe Negbi:

The Righteous Bolshevist

The verdict which determines that the commentator Moshe Negbi acted in conflict of interest is just another stage in a long route of double-standards, harassment, and dubious ethics.

by Amnon Dankner

Moshe Negbi's conviction in the Appeals Court of the Journalism Council was and would certainly be defined by Negbi himself, were it not that it refers to him - as very serious. After all, a legal commentator and an expert in journalistic ethics stumbled and did not stand up in the face of temptation. "The case of a regular journalist", Negbi would certainly say in one of his radio and television broadcasts in which he appears frequently,"is not the same as one who presumes to be the champion of justice and propriety, and one who relates with double strictness to everything that others do."

The matter is really much more serious than what is written in the verdict. For procedural reasons, the court did not deal with the central matter in which Negbi sinned: it is just not that he prevented himself from making clear to those viewing television that when he comments on any matter that concerns (Maariv publisher) Ofer Nimrodi, he is suspect of conflict of interest because he was fired from Maariv five months previously. He also gave a commentary that was mistaken, slanted, unfounded and saturated with bad intentions in a conspicuous way.

Also, at the time, Negbi presented the termination of his employment at Maariv in a false way and enlisted for his side a public storm that was based on a foundation of falsehood. As opposed to what he presented, he was not fired in order to shut his mouth, but rather because he himself shut his mouth, and refused to write a legal commentary on the Kahalani verdict and refused to come to the editor at the time, Yaakov Erez, to clarify the matter. Instead of receiving accolades from the champions of freedom of expression for letting Negbi write and say severe and scalding things about his publisher, during the entire course of the Nimrodi affair, without even one word being disqualified, without that even one hair falling from his head, Maariv got hell because of the firing, that came after Negbi's refusal to commentate on, in the framework of his usual role at the newspaper, a verdict which started to purify the atmosphere around the affair, and to show that the severe things which Negbi wrote during the course of the affair did not hold water.

Negbi succeeded in created for himself the image of a professional saint. From my life experience I know that professional saints always hide a black hole in their past that does not cease to gnaw at them. And indeed, at the time that Negbi served in the Military Prosecution in Gaza, he was suspected by his superiors of the crime of an attempt to destroy material(a legal document) in the case of a terrorist, in order to blur his faulty treatment of the case, which caused the release of the terrorist. He succeeded in finishing the matter in that they kicked him out of the Military Prosecution. It is easy to guess what Negbi would say his own affair - "It must be investigated until completion, it is very severe and that the law must be exhaustively applied to it."

The question of what kind of psychological process a man goes through after an event like this, in which they dealt with him tenderly, until he becomes a legal prophet of wrath, who sees everything with excess severity and hurries to hang suspects before their trial, with an abundance of piercing utterances that intensify their sins which have not yet been proved, is an interesting question in the realm of psychology. In any case, in a continuous and completely unethical action, Moshe Negbi was accustomed for years, to our great shame even on the pages of this newspaper, to torture those under investigation, suspects and those accused; and behold when they where found clean, their cases closed or acquitted, he was accustomed too many times, in severe opposition to ethics and human trait, to fill his mouth with water and to finish the matter with a laconic shoulder shrug.

There was in this method something frightening, Bolshevist: in too many cases he really enlisted himself to be the arm of the prosecution, an arm whose function was to strike the suspect or the accused, especially in his being a public figure, until he would get to court with his guilt and disgrace already known and publicized, before the trial started. As is the way of Bolsheviks in soul, Negbi also was accustomed on his radio shows to exalt his freedom of expression, but never to allow a true discussion in the hour of broadcasting that he was allocated. It was, in general, a mud bath of mutual agreement between Negbi and the people that he invited to the studio, and his individual opinion ruled there almost unrestricted.

It is no wonder that Negbi became an icon in a very defined social-cultural environment, that some of its characteristics are hypocrisy, judging others strictly as opposed to lenient and flimsy self-judgement, brawling that characterizes a witch-hunt, and the enslavement of intellectual integrity for the benefit of political opinions. And indeed when MK Zehava Gal'on, whom Negbi worries to mention a lot and to define her as "high caliber" and other superlative words of praise, was hurled into a police investigation with suspicion of (lack of)"cleanliness of hands"(i.e. monetary impropriety), Negbi failed to conform to his usual manner, and continued to praise and glorify her.

A few weeks ago it became clear, that in his role as a teacher of journalistic ethics, Negbi composed a question for his students, in which an ultra-Orthodox mayor in Jerusalem who in the past was the head of a charitable organization had an affair with a female employee. That he took pains to defame the mayor of Jerusalem, Uri Lopolianski, and to throw suspicion on him as one who had an extra-marital affair, a matter which the university apologized to the mayor and defined as "nonsense", bear witness that the praised teacher of ethics does not really understand what ethics are. And if he understands, he does not behave according to its rules.

Along with his other stations along the way, he is revealed as an unsuitable man in a unsuitable position.
True, Dankner did not intend to praise our idol. He doesn't understand that by us the ends justify the means! All the "nasty" things he wrote are actual a song of praise! What's more, Dankner gave a Get to the enlightened public when he started questioning if Arye Deri really received justice. We will not forgive and we will not forget his appearance at the Sha'agat Arye Yeshiva that Deri's supporters set up outside the Ma'asiyahu Prison. In any case, we at CRAP are and will remain Moshe Negbi fans forever!

Amnon Dankner addressing Deri supporters at the Sha'agat Arye yeshiva near the Ma'asiyahu prison.  We will not forgive and we will not forget!
Amnon Dankner addressing Deri supporters at the Sha'agat Arye yeshiva near the Ma'asiyahu Prison.

We will not forgive and we will not forget!




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