NEWS ANALYSIS Latest political scandal fuels divisiveness in Israeli society

JERUSALEM, Jan. 18 (JTA) — An obscure drug trial that took place 17 years ago has become the focus of a public storm that is sweeping Israel with a peculiar ferocity. Two weeks ago, few Israelis had heard of Yechiem Ohana, a Tiberias businessman who was jailed for 30 months in the early 1980s for trafficking in drugs — and who has been proclaiming his innocence ever since. The issues in the case, first published last week by the Israeli daily Ma’ariv, are intricate and complex, and few people claim to fully understand them. But this has not stopped anyone from taking sides. Suddenly the country is divided between those who sympathize with Ohana’s insistent demands for a retrial, and those who repeat the police assertion that the man is a scoundrel, a forger and a fraud. Although the case may appear to be just the latest scandal enveloping Israel, the heated debate surrounding it reflects, to an uncomfortable degree, the fault lines that divide Israel politically. Surfacing as Israel prepares for critical elections in May, the Ohana affair has exposed a fractured society whose deep divisions must worry all who care about the fundamental strength and cohesion of the Jewish state. Those on the political left see Ohana’s case as the tip of a huge conspiracy designed to compromise the Israeli justice system and undermine the rule of law. Those on the right see this interpretation as pure paranoia on the part of a beleaguered elite who are fearful of the rise to power of the Sephardim, immigrants and the Orthodox — in short, of the coalition that supports Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. To observe that Israel is in the grip of election fever, four months before the May 17 balloting, would be an understatement. Feeding the fever were reports this week that Israeli police are probing possible links between a series of break-ins during the past four months in the homes of activists working for the Labor Party’s candidate for prime minister, Ehud Barak. Word of these break-ins surfaced just days after news broke of a similar incident at the Washington offices of Stanley Greenberg, an American pollster hired to work on Barak’s election campaign. The reports led to predictably partisan comments, with Barak supporters complaining about an Israeli Watergate and Netanyahu backers saying such accusations amounted to provocation. While such activity and recriminations are arguably unhealthy and premature, such partisanship is a fairly normal occurrence in many democracies. But the reaction to the Ohana affair is different. Ohana, a member of a well-known and politically powerful family, claims he was framed for trafficking drugs by a group of senior police officials who were conspiring to weaken the then-national police superintendent, Herzl Shafir, by blocking his appointment of a close ally to a top position in the northern police command. The ally was a friend of Ohana. To have Ohana convicted of selling drugs would hurt the ally — and deny him the post. Ohana claims, moreover, that the judge trying his case was blackmailed by the police officials over an illicit affair the judge had had with a minor. The judge now holds a very senior position in Israel’s judicial system. If he were compromised by Ohana’s allegations, the credibility of the entire system could be dealt a massive blow. The role of Ma’ariv in reporting Ohana’s charges has also become controversial. The paper’s publisher, Ofer Nimrodi, is currently serving a jail term on charges of approving illegal phone taps. Nimrodi, too, has long claimed that he is a victim of the legal system and that others — specifically the publisher of the rival daily Yediot Achronot — had gotten away with similar wrongdoing. The conspiracy theorists say Ma’ariv’s role in the Ohana affair is an extension of its publisher’s vendetta against the judicial and legal establishments. The paper’s editors insist that they were acting purely out of journalistic motivations and that they spent four months trying to corroborate Ohana’s charges before they published them. Along with going to Ma’ariv, Ohana also spoke with the chairman of the Knesset Law Committee, Hanan Porat of the National Religious Party. Porat subsequently transmitted documents and evidence from Ohana to Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein, whom Porat urged to move for a retrial. The conspiracy theorists point to Orthodox legislators’ frequent feuds with the Supreme Court — which has issued recent rulings that whittled away at Orthodox control over religious life in Israel — as being behind Porat’s decision to take up Ohana’s case. Porat, however, maintains that his position made him an obvious choice for Ohana to approach. Ohana and his defenders say his 17-year quest for justice can hardly have been motivated by present-day political considerations. But the conspiracy theorists maintain that the quest — which, they concede, may have intrinsic merit — is now being exploited by political and economic forces intent on undermining the legal and judicial systems. Riven by ideological, religious, ethnic and political divisions, Israel has clung desperately to the last few untainted institutions in its society that are the bedrock of national solidarity: the army, the courts and a legal system that ensures due process. For the most part, these institutions have been kept out of the political fray. Their integrity and moral authority have always been cited as critical to the well- being of Israeli society. But now, in the heat of a political campaign, the Ohana affair threatens to throw the courts and the police into the political wringer. As a result, the legal system may emerge stripped of its prestige and credibility – – a development that would surely weaken Israel.