Uneasy With Ezer

While Israeli PresidentWeizman tries to tough it out,
many worry about eroding ethical standards.

Jerusalem

N

ixon or Clinton: Which
model is Israeli President Ezer
Weizman following?
Some politicians have
called on Weizman to step down in
return for a blanket pardon, such as
that granted President Richard Nixon
by his successor, Gerald Ford.
But Weizman appears to
want to emulate President Bill
Clinton and his dogged fight to
remain in office despite the
Monica Lewinsky affair.
Weizman made it clear during a
televised speech to the nation
Sunday that he would neither
resign nor take a leave of absence
while police probe allegations he
illegally received cash gifts from
a French millionaire friend. _
Echoes of the Le-winsky
affair could be heard Tuesday,
when a Likud legislator
launched an effort to impeach
Weizman. Yossi Katz is trying
to obtain the signatures of 20
legislators, a move required to
convene a special committee to
consider impeachment.
Weizman's decision not to
step down has elicited across-
the-board criticism from Israel's
political community.
The Weizman affair, com-
bined with other scandals that
have shaken Israeli politics in recent
years, has also raised another, poten-
tially more troubling question: Are the
ethical norms that characterized the
Zionist state in its early decades giving
way to a corrupt set of practices more
worthy of a banana republic?
Weizman, Israel's seventh president,
has acknowledged accepting hundreds
of thousands of dollars in gifts from
Sudan-born businessman Edouard
Saroussi from 1988 to 1993, when he
served as a legislator and cabinet min-
ister. Weizman claims the money was
a gift and that his longtime personal
lawyer, Hanina Brandes, who was also
Saroussi's lawyer, advised him this was
legally permissible.
Attorney General Elyakim

Rubinstein ordered a full-fledged police
inquiry last week when evidence sur-
faced that Weizman had undertaken
paid consultancy work for Saroussi's
company in Africa in 1983 and 1984.
Rubinstein was angered that the presi-
dent's lawyers had not volunteered this
information.
The still-mushrooming affair is a
source of shame and real pain to virtual-
ly every Israeli citizen, both because of
the warmth and sympathy many feel

AP P ho to /Gove rnment Press O ffice, Yaa kov Saar

DAVID LANDAU
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

• Aryeh Deri, the head of the fer-
vently Orthodox Shas Party, was sen-
tenced last April to four years in jail on
charges of bribe-taking, fraud and
breach of the public trust.
• A top aide to former Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon
Sheves, is the subject of an ongoing
bribery trial.
Add to these the high-profile case
of Mdariv publisher Ofer Nimrodi,
who is facing charges of being
involved in a murder conspiracy and
subverting justice, and you have a
worrying picture indeed.
Israeli political observers point to
two key events in the country's recent
history that play a significant role in
shaping — and perhaps hyping —
the current wave of exposures sweep-
ing through the nation's political
establishment:
• The Bar-On Affair — In January
1997, Netanyahu appointed a little-
known Jerusalem attorney, Roni Bar-
-On, as attorney general, but had to
force him to resign 48 hours later under
a storm of allegations that his nomina-
tion reflected an attempted "takeover"
of the state's prosecution apparatus by a
cabal of politicians.
There were allegations at the time

Israeli President Ezer Weizman
makes a televised announcement from
Jerusalem Jan. 23, saying he was
determined not to resign from office.

toward Weizman the man and because
of the shadow it casts over the political
system.
While Israelis watch with growing
unease as their president is investigated
by police, they are also-well aware that
this is not the first time that a trusted
political official has had a run-in with
the law.
• Even as the Weizman affair
unfolds, Prime Minister Ehud Barak is
being hauled over the coals by the state
comptroller over alleged election-fund-
ing abuses. An official report is due out
soon.
• Former Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu is being investigated for
allegedly misappropriating gifts given
him while in office.

that Bar-On was appointed as part of a
deal to provide a plea bargain in the
ongoing corruption case against Deri
and to soft-pedal charges of telephone
tapping then pending against Nimrodi.
Rubinstein, who was subsequently
named attorney general, is now spear-
heading a veritable crusade by the
state judicial machine to "purge" the
political establishment of any vestiges
of corruption.
This explains, say observers, the
stern and unforgiving attitude adopt-
ed by Rubinstein and State Prosecutor
Edna Arbel toward Weizman's alleged
wrongdoing.
• The Deri conviction — After his
sentencing last year, Deri's appeal
before the Supreme Court is slated to

.

begin soon. When he was sentenced
to four years, the court said last year
the bribes were general goodwill pay-
ments rather than a quid pro quo for
specific services rendered.
Those circumstances are not all that
different from those alleged against
Weizman.
This explains the insistence by the
nation's law enforcement officials and
of most of its politicians that
Weizman face the music — and their
reluctance to turn a blind eye, despite
the president's long service to the state
as soldier and statesman.
They fear that to do so would be to
trigger huge Shas protests charging dis-
crimination.
The prosecution and conviction of
Deri set strict norms of conduct for
public officials. Weizman is the first to
be measured by them — and to be
found lacking.
But the gruff and still widely popular
president believes the public will ulti-
mately vindicate him, giving him reluc-
tant admiration and even support in his
determined bid, as he said Sunday, "to
fight for the truth, till the end."
His decision not to step down, not
surprisingly, was criticized by right-
wing politicians, who have been
angered by his forthright support for
Barak's peace policies.
But the criticisms have come from
across the political spectrum, including
from three cabinet ministers.
Justice Minister Yossi Beilin, who
had publicly urged the president to take •
a leave of absence, said he "respected"
Weizman's decision to stay in office.
But he called on him not to dis-
charge two of his principal constitution-
al functions — swearing in judges and
considering pardons — while the police
inquiry against him was in progress. On
Tuesday, Weizman's attorney, Ya'acov
Weinrot, sent a letter to Beilin indicat-
ing the president would not fulfill those
duties while the police probe continues.
Meanwhile, Minister of
Absorption Yuli Tamir termed
Weizman's television address "disap-
pointing." She said he would be
pressed publicly on the Saroussi
affair wherever he went, and this
would inevitably detract from the
dignity of his high office. ❑

4

•••

• •

t 14
4 4

44,,lt 43
,54- ,4
444 I',
;i14 444:
,

4, 4

t

i

5 ,

44

:eft f ,4

.4 • • •
!yttea..,itstseir.x.r.tet.
t•• t it t t • ti *I it
oitt
:t
t • i.
''• • 4 4 4 t t + , 3 at •
• 44.1,1 St•rti•..41t•

4 'it 4'. • ttttt
t
t • '
t••
4o 4
• • • t
It •

1/28
2000

25