April Fool’s Day Capers Backfire

Two April Fool’s day pranks, one by a soldier in the Israel Defense Force intelligence corps and the other by Israel Radio journalists, caused severe embarrassment to the IDF and the Defense Ministry and touched off a panic among Israelis who have accounts in Swiss banks.

The soldier, not immediately identified, was promptly sentenced to 35 days in a military jail for perpetrating a hoax that Nabih Berri, leader of the mainstream Shiite faction in Lebanon, had been gravely wounded in an assassination attempt Tuesday.

Why the soldier thought this was “funny” could not be ascertained. But his joke had fairly serious consequences. The report of the fake assassination attempt appeared on official IDF stationery. The army passed it on to the Defense Ministry Yitzhak Rabin who was appearing before the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Security Committee.

Rabin accepted the report as authentic and commented on it to the committee. The media obtained a copy and the report was broadcast by Israel Radio along with a lengthy commentary by one its Arab affairs experts on the implications of the alleged assassination attempt. The hoax was discovered only later and Rabin personally ordered the perpetrator punished.

Meanwhile, it is not clear what punishment may be meted out to the Israel Radio journalists who broadcast a report Tuesday that the Israeli and Swiss governments had signed a secret treaty under which the Swiss agreed to disclose the numbers of bank accounts held by Israelis in Swiss banks.

Israel Radio telephones were immediately flooded with calls, many from local bank managers who said their clients told them that if the reports was true they would emigrate from Israel immediately.