Tag Archives: Middle East

Sometimes Motives Don’t Matter: The Establishment’s Impulse to Protect (Allegedly) Corrupt Politicians Can Create Opportunities for Criminal Justice Reform

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Since 2016, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been investigated for a number of corruption allegations (see here and here). In apparent response, David Amsalem, a member of the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) from Netanyahu’s Likud Party, has proposed several bills which, if enacted, would help to protect the Prime Minister from these investigations (see here and here). Most recently, in June 2018 Amsalem presented a bill that would change Israel’s system of criminal appeals. Currently, the prosecution can appeal criminal verdicts, including acquittals; according to Amsalem’s so-called Appeal Bill, such appeals would require an appellate court’s permission, and this permission could only be given under special circumstances, and only for crimes punishable by ten or more years in prison. Amsalem, who denied that the Appeal Bill has anything to do with the investigations of Netanyahu, claimed that he proposed this bill because “[a] moral state doesn’t have to persecute a citizen who has received a sentence too light for its taste.” However, opposition Knesset members and commentators – many of whom usually support defendant-protective reforms to criminal procedure – have harshly attacked the Appeal Bill. The critics’ main (sometimes only) argument against the Appeal Bill has been that its purpose is to prevent the prosecution from appealing a possible acquittal of Netanyahu. As Tamar Zandberg, Chair of the opposition Meretz Party put it, “[t]his [government] coalition’s obsessive preoccupation with the legal authorities to protect a prime minister immersed in investigations is a mark of Cain for Israeli democracy.”

The hostility to bills that appear to be devised specifically to protect politicians from corruption prosecutions is definitely understandable, and the wide opposition in Israel to the Appeal Bill is therefore a natural reaction. Nevertheless, this impulse should be overcome when considering bills proposing criminal justice reforms with general application, and in particular bills strengthening individual rights in the criminal process. I do not claim that the Appeal Bill should be enacted into law, and I acknowledge that there may be some legitimate reasons to oppose limitations on prosecutorial appeals. However, generally speaking, we should not refrain from supporting criminal justice reforms just because their initiators may have had bad motives. Instead, every proposal of systemic reform should be considered on its merits, and, if found justified, be enthusiastically supported, despite its tainted origin. Continue reading →

The Case for Abolishing Police Commissioners’ Extendable Terms in Israel

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The investigations into corruption allegations against Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have received massive attention from the media in Israel and around the world ever since they began in late 2016. In one of the most recent developments, last September Israel’s Minister of Public Security, Gilad Erdan, officially announced his decision not to extend the three-year term of the current head of the Israeli Police, Commissioner Roni Alsheich, by an additional year. Therefore, Alsheich is expected to complete his tenure at the end of this year. Erdan ascribed his decision not to extend Alsheich’s tenure to “differences of opinion and divergent approaches on various issues, some of them substantial and weighty, and which had a significant impact on the public’s trust in the police.” Opposition members and commentators, however, claimed that this decision was driven by the fact that Alsheich has been (or has been perceived as) leading the investigations into Prime Minister Netanyahu. According to the critics, Erdan, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud Party, was acting to please influential senior members of the Likud, as well as Netanyahu himself – an allegation that Erdan denied.

The facts of this particular case are murky. There is no solid evidence to show that Erdan’s decision not to extend Alsheich’s term was related to the latter’s involvement in the Prime Minister’s corruption probe. (In fact, even critics of Erdan’s decision do not seem to claim that Alsheich’s commissionership was flawless.) Nevertheless, this incident highlights a larger institutional flaw in Israel’s current practice of appointing police commissioners for three years with the option for extension.

Israeli law does not actually specify a fixed length for a police commissioner’s term, nor does it mention anything about the potential for term extension. In fact, Israel’s Police Ordinance says only that the commissioner is to be appointed by the government, per the recommendation of the Minister of Public Security. However, over the years it has become an accepted practice (though not without exceptions) that the police commissioner is appointed for a term of three years, and toward the conclusion of that term, the Minister of Public Security decides whether to recommend that the government extend the commissioner’s term by approximately one additional year. This practice should be abolished. Instead, the law should be amended such that the commissioner would be appointed for a fixed, non-extendable term (except in certain emergency situations) – a proposal that has been advocated by commentators and some members of the Knesset (Israel’s parliament), but so far has gone nowhere.

There are three strong arguments, from the perspective of anticorruption policy, for giving the police commissioner a fixed non-extendable term (at this point, regardless of its exact duration): Continue reading →