In part: Mandelblit encourages leaks, but only from politicians

Guideline No. 4.1114 is essentially a reassuring line to the press and its sources, reducing the fear of seeking and exposing leaks from the state apparatus, and also reducing the reluctance of sources and media against publications that could lead to the detection and punishment of partners in violation of the law. But within the blissful attitude toward internal information ethics for the public good, there is discrimination against officials, soldiers, police, lawyers and judges – anyone subject to civil service or other disciplinary laws – and to the benefit of politicians. A reminder of the latest ways to treat each other has provided Katz’s Friends’ Trial in the Knesset Committee: If there are any friends, there is no trial.

The legal clauses, such as 113 and 117, whose basic purpose is to fight espionage, have no ranks – what is forbidden, forbidden. Spying does not have to mean sending information to the enemy through an agent or computer; It is often performed, or in fact, caused by good faith, in the public eye, in the media. The law is old and outdated, but Mandelblit does not appeal to the Prime Minister or the Justice Minister to update it. As a substitute, it advocates a “prudent application” of the enforcement of offenses relating to the transmission of prohibited information, ie leaks, and “the special use of the criminal tool in cases of serious injury (actual or force) in vital interests.”

For example, “the provision of information or documents that reveal security secrets” may be compromised by “the security of the state or its foreign relations”; Exposing an agent in a gang could endanger his life; The provision of information relating to criminal investigation “may prejudice the proceedings, the investigator’s limitation and his right to due process and third parties.” When a public servant is the leaker, “public trust in the system of government and justice is also impaired.” Oh, holy innocence: when the public servant is the suspect and also the leaker, the purpose of the leak is the appeal of public trust in the system and its leaders, including the Judea and Samaria.

Faced with the negative side of the leaks, Mandelblit places the billing side: “The public’s right to know and the freedom of the press, which allow for public control over the conduct of government systems, as the basis for a democratic regime,” and therefore must be discussed in each case. Also, when the source does not identify, there is a press secret, and if many are exposed to the information will be harmed – perhaps also in media research (flipping through the telephone outputs, as was done to Mandelblit when addressed in the Harpaz affair) and polygraph – the privacy and dignity of the innocent. This is a particularly creative argument that is not heard in other investigations by a group within which a single offender acted. Another reason: “The effect of the investigation must be taken into account on the functioning of the entire body investigated.” Once again, an echo of the vicious investigation by the vengeful successor of Maj. Mandelblit as Chief Military Advocate, Danny Efroni, in the Harpaz affair.

The corrupt will continue to chuckle

That is why Mandelblit disapproves of the court’s approach to the law. To him, it is not desirable to mount a par. It is better to have a rotten mountain, to avoid interrogation, with the main suspect being the head of the mountain. “Comprehensive treatment, arms integration, prevention and publicity” is sufficient, and if the infringement of the values ​​and interests protected by the prohibition on the provision of information “is not particularly high”, a disciplinary procedure can be satisfied.

However, a disciplinary procedure exists only for those who are not elected officials. A prime minister, ministers and Knesset members are exempt from it. Even worse: They can order employees who are subject to them to pass prohibited information, employees will be apprehended and punished, and the prime minister or ministers will rely on the Supreme Court to find an explanation for discrimination. For more information, see Mendelblitt’s predecessor, Yehuda Weinstein, for refusing to investigate the leak of the Kukush presentation Strong”.

The absurdity is even more acute, because revealing the corruption hidden in documents that someone has bothered to classify, is for the most part public servants and unelected – the revealed corruption is that of the elected officials. Mandelblit broadcasts a small corruption alert to a risk of investigation that will lead to revelations, but will still retain their inferiority to the objects of exposure, if they sing. The revelers run the risk of freezing a promotion, boycotting their offices, suspension and even layoffs. The corrupt will continue to chuckle.

Mandelblit has a weakness for the systems chief; The files of Benjamin and Sarah Netanyahu, which went far beyond the benefit of the state, prove that he went out of his way to facilitate them, and not the other way around. In the Prosecutor’s Office, the civilian, like the military, are being sued at the highest level. No bags are sewn there – they are devoured. Champion and Minister are still vulnerable. A Major General and Prime Minister enjoy a unique advance. As such, Mandelblit took liberty, as a commissioner, to invent a “weakening affinity” that does not appear in military jurisdiction, in order to offend Boogie Ya’alon’s alleged offense, without dispute, as chief of staff prior to retiring from the permanent service.

One of Mandelblit’s benchmarks, in deciding whether to investigate a security leak, is cost versus benefit: if the investigation focuses on a spotlight on a leaked issue and is “at the core of the secret” – intelligence, nuclear and the like – it is best to grit teeth and let go. Makes sense, but problematic in two dimensions. Security officials or police who are supposed to have an opinion on this issue may be kind to their political superior – there is no point in asking Mossad chief Yossi Cohen whether to investigate Netanyahu’s secret – and the interrogators will work to widen the front and add secrets that investigators, attorneys and judges are not supposed to know about And force closing cases. In the era of the state comptroller’s eagerness to please those who appointed him, Mendelblit’s directive can be seen as a permit for early publication of chapters and drafts in the audit report, which the auditor wants to steal or delay. The Comptroller’s Law, which prohibits it, is no longer attributed to the criminal provisions of the Criminal Code.

Arbitrary and selective enforcement

Mendelblit’s new directive is gnawing on the power of military censorship, which depends, in the most part, on curbing goodwill from the media and bad will of government officials, who do not bother to fulfill their duty – even before the newspapers and channels that do their thing – to pass on information that has come to them in their capacity, Its discovery would jeopardize security. The professional authority of censorship rests entirely on the assumption that, if disqualified and challenged, you will be able to convince a judge that in the publication of embodied certainty that there is a real danger to state security and human life.

This, in itself, is a senseless pretension to determine what really contributes to security and what detracts from it. Well-known example: If journalists gambled on censorship and published from the winter of 1981 onwards, the government and the General Staff’s plot to go to the Lebanon war, and the publicity would have thwarted the war, security would have been paid and the lives of hundreds of Israelis would have been saved. The censor, who acted as Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon and Rafael Eitan under his authority , Gave too narrow an interpretation of the term security.

In this context, the situation has improved in recent years, in part as the censorship allowed the publication of information about the top-level controversy over the question of Netanyahu’s desire to bomb Iran. Mandelblit, who mentions the censorship under his guidance, did not bother to ascertain with her the effect of the directive on her. Counselor, does not mean that he also consults.

Chief Military Censor, Brigadier General Ariella Ben-Avraham, is retiring from office this week. The leading candidate for the post of Chief of Staff, a recommendation by the Chief of Staff, and the approval of the Defense Minister is Col. Avihai, who until last summer was the head of the information security system. In the IDF. Seemingly a natural transition, but in practice there are differences between the censor’s good cop approach and the bad police officer or HAB during a field security period. So far, Rambam has never been appointed a censor, a promotion that usually continued to rank as well. Brigadier General. The only one who nearly did this was an officer who collaborated with Chief of Staff Moshe Levy while Levi was concocting a plot on Gen. Dan Shomron, the candidate for his legacy. Not surprisingly, his appointment was canceled by the next chief of staff, Samaria.

The leaks are Mandelblit’s homosexuality. Second Attorney Haim Cohen ordered police and prosecutors – as one of his successors in both counseling and supreme court, Yitzhak Zamir – “to refrain from investigation and prosecution of consensual and modest gay relations, even though such relations were at the time a serious criminal offense. Jurists) were divided around the question of whether it is right and proper that the Judiciary, which is in charge of complying with the law, issue a provision that effectively defines the law.

In the general balance, Mandelblit’s directive not to obey the law will benefit the sources, the press and the public. indeed Too bad it came too late for Isaac (Yitzhak) Yaakov, Liora Galt Berkowitz and Anat Kem, but since neither of them reached the rank of prime minister, Mossad chief Mandelblit refused to order Cohen’s investigation into Arnon Milchan – chief of staff, doubt If the new permissiveness would help them. By volunteering to fill the legislature’s absence, Mendelblit makes the law a mere recommendation, which he may ignore, or perhaps not investigate, and in any case be examined only retrospectively; And his guidance is tainted with arbitrariness, biased selective enforcement, contrary to popular impression, in favor of politicians, Knesset members and the government and its head.