The pile of contradictions and white lies that Avichai Mandelblit delivered in his testimony today reminded me that I hadn’t shared last week’s column about him here:
Many suspects make a habit of wearing a kippah in the courtroom. Avichai Mandelblit is not a suspect in the criminal sense, and he already has a kippah, but he arrived at the District Court carrying a plastic bag. The kippah and the bag serve the same purpose: I’m not as sophisticated and malicious as you think. Fancy leather briefcases belong in *House of Cards*. Me? I’m just poor old Avichai from Petah Tikva, carrying a plastic bag.
What would Prosecutor General Mandelblit have said about a figure so central to a case who, by his own account, knew nothing, heard nothing, and saw nothing of what was happening under his authority—and in the flagship event of his tenure, no less: the first criminal trial of a sitting prime minister in Israel’s history?
Mandelblit claims he knew nothing about the dark and criminal interrogation tactic used against Nir Hefetz. Senior prosecutors authorized it, and he only discovered it after the fact. He had not heard about the attempt to recruit Filber as a state witness. “That is unacceptable to me,” he added afterward.
He had not even seen a single one of the 315 allegedly favorable articles published on Walla that form the core of the indictment—the alleged bribery for which he unleashed a nine-year hurricane upon Israel, one that continues to rage and devastate everything in its path.
Either Mandelblit lied on the witness stand, or he lied at the podium in the Ministry of Justice.
On the day he announced his decision to file the draft indictment against Netanyahu, he declared:
“Over the past several months, extremely senior teams of first-rate prosecutors, headed by the State Attorney and the Tel Aviv District Attorney, have left no stone unturned and examined every piece of information. We held dozens of lengthy and in-depth discussions. I heard every opinion, every argument, and every perspective. We did not rush, we did not cut corners, and we acted without fear or favoritism, with one sole objective: to uncover the truth.”
How does that speech square with the fact that the attorney general brought charges without personally examining a single article?
And beyond that, how can he claim to have acted “professionally and transparently, with an uncompromising commitment to justice and the rule of law in the State of Israel,” when this week he himself revealed on the witness stand that Netanyahu had not been confronted with even one Walla article?
How do you prosecute someone on an unprecedented charge involving biased media coverage without checking, for example, whether the same articles were also published in other media outlets?
“If what you’re saying is true, then nobody told me,” the man with the plastic bag feigned innocence.
“Should they have told me? Of course! What, were they trying to mislead me?”
This lack of awareness did not emerge in a vacuum.
It bears repeating: Israel’s public service is mediocre and dysfunctional. What you encounter when registering property at the Land Registry is what you encounter at the Ministry of Justice.
Those who point out that there were also serious failures in the Olmert trial are correct.
So what exactly does that prove?
But mediocrity becomes lethal when mixed into a single cocktail with ruthlessness and politicization.
Former Police Commissioner Roni Alsheich has already admitted that nobody thought Netanyahu would remain in office.
Last week, it emerged during the trial that senior investigator Yoav Telem violated every rule while investigating Ilan Yeshua, telling his subordinates, “This will never reach trial. > >