A country gone berserk. In future years, when someone reviews the happenings of this past week, they'll say that he must be joking. A fabricated reality, something beyond imagination, re: the American President, the head of Military Intelligence (AMaN) and the head of the Mossad, involved in negotiations with three judges regarding the Israeli Prime Minister's daily agenda.
Not sufficient for those prestigious people was the Prime Minister's personal plea for a two week respite from legal issues dealt with in the High Court due to pressing subjects of diplomatic and military nature involving the entire world. He did not enumerate those matters because they were of top-secret interests but it was sufficient to understand from the letter that it involved subjects that were best kept under cover.
Only a few days before, we were in the midst of a harsh war and it was clear to anyone with a bit of sense in his head that this particular war had far reaching consequences. But the judges were not convinced. The same goes to the government judicial advisor who should have long been sent flying.
The Prime Minister had no choice but to gather to the judges' office the whole top brass of the security services together with the representatives of the power service of national security in order to convince the judges that the issues involved were of supreme and crucial national concern which justified postponing the hearings for a fortnight. The judges sat and deliberated whether to allow Mr. Netanyahu a reprieve from appearing in court, or whether to force him to attend and put on hold all of those imperative matters which he had to deal with.
If this had happened in any other normal country on the face of the globe, it would have people rolling in laughter, because it is truly ridiculous, except the joke is on us.
It is not for naught that the American president is angry at the Israeli judicial network. He, too, was involved in criminal charges that were halted the moment he was elected president. Who, no better than Trump knows what a judicial system can do when it decides to persecute someone to the end.
The judges 'capitulated' in the end, allowing Netanyahu a respite of one week with the possibility of an added reprieve if they saw fit. Perhaps they were truly convinced by the rostrum of top brass which accosted them. Perhaps they feared to anger the American president beyond limit, lest he impose sanctions on the judges as he did on the judges in The Hague, who had to flee underground ever since he came into office.
Either way, the fact that the judicial system under the protection of the national judicial advisor caused national security secrets to be unveiled before the people and the world, and even if the judges signed on secrecy, it is a severe breach in of itself, beside justifying a reform in the whole judicial system.
