MIDNIGHT TERROR AGAINST TAMIMI FAMILY CONTINUES

In the middle of the night on Monday, around 3 a.m., the Israeli military raided the central occupied West Bank village of Nabi Saleh in full force, a common occurrence for the village’s internationally-recognized residents, the Tamimi family, who have seen several family members — a large portion of them minors — arrested from the village in the past few months.

On Monday alone, Israeli forces detained 10 members of the extended Tamimi family, including five minors between the ages of 14-17, a 19-year-old, and the rest between the rest between 21 and 29 years of age, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society.

Among the detainees was 15-year-old Muhammad Tamimi, who is scheduled to have reconstructive surgery on his skull on March 5th. Muhammad was released later Monday afternoon.

Israeli soldiers had shot Muhammad in the face with a rubber-coated steel bullet in December, during demonstrations in Nabi Saleh against US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Moments after Muhammad was shot, his then 16-year-old cousin Ahed learned of his injury as Israeli soldiers continued to surround the village, including her family home.

It was then that Ahed was filmed kicking and slapping an armed Israeli soldier who had encroached on her family’s property — an incident she would be detained for days later, along with her mother and cousin.

Ahed, who spent her 17th birthday in Israeli prison, is now being prosecuted behind closed doors in an Israeli military court that has a conviction rate of over 99 percent.

After spending days in a coma and undergoing several life-saving surgeries, Muhammad — who has been injured by Israeli forces before, and was previously detained when he was 13 — was released back home to Nabi Saleh with half of his skull missing.

Over the course of the two months since Muhammad’s injury and Ahed’s detention, the extended Tamimi family of Nabi Saleh and its twin village Deir Nitham have seen over a dozen of their relatives arrested, at least three put on trial in military court, and one — 16-year-old Musaab Tamimi of Deir Nitham — shot and killed by Israeli forces.

Campaign of Vengeance

By Monday afternoon, Muhammad had been released, while the nine others who were arrested remained in Israeli custody, according to Bassem Tamimi, the father of Ahed Tamimi.

Despite being released, Bassem told Mondoweiss that the fact that Muhammad was even arrested in the first place is indicative of Israel’s disregard for basic human rights.

“Muhammad is critically injured because of the occupation, and they put his life in even more danger last night,” Bassem said, adding “this just proves they don’t care about any international opinion, human rights or international law.”

Bassem told Mondoweiss that Monday’s detentions were just another part of Israel’s campaign of vengeance targeting the Tamimi family in the wake of Ahed’s arrest.

“Every international institution that deals with the Palestinians and human rights issues are responsible for the lives of our children and for the suffering of the Tamimi family and Nabi Saleh village,” Bassem said.

The Tamimi’s relatives in Deir Nitham expressed similar sentiments following the killing of their son Musaab in January, saying that days after Ahed’s arrest, the people of the village were threatened by Israeli soldiers who told them “The day will come when you wish you are not a Tamimi.”

“We have become a symbol of nonviolent resistance, and they [Israel] don’t want the voice of Palestine to be heard from anywhere or anyone,” Bassem said, “who knows what they will do next.”

International campaign for Ahed’s release continues

The Tamimi family of Nabi Saleh is well known internationally for their activism against the Israeli occupation, which maintains a heavy, near-constant presence in their village.

Ahed is famous across Palestine and the Arab world for videos of her, since her childhood, defiantly resisting Israeli soldiers who clash with Palestinians in her village nearly every week.

Two years ago, her family made headlines when an Israeli soldier violently attempted to arrest her younger brother, who had one arm in a cast at the time. Ahed and her mother manager to pull the soldier of her brother and free him.

Since her arrest in December, Ahed has become the subject of dozens of solidarity campaigns across the world demanding her release from Israeli prison, and an end to Israeli detention of Palestinian children.

As Ahed and her mother Nariman — who was arrested after her daughter — are being prosecuted behind closed doors, international rights groups such as Amnesty International have called for their immediate release, saying that Ahed’s detention “is a desperate attempt to intimidate Palestinian children who dare to stand up to repression by occupying forces.”

The group highlighted that under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Israel is a state party, “the arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child must be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time,” adding that Ahed is currently facing up to 10 years in prison

According to prisoners rights group Addameer, as of January 2018, there were 330 Palestinian children being held in Israeli prison.

Meanwhile, Bassem, who has been denied permission to visit Ahed in prison, waits until the next court date to catch a glimpse of his daughter.

A NATIONAL HISTORY OF SEX, LIES AND CORRUPTION

Last week, the Israeli police recommended indicting Prime Minister Netanyahu on two separate corruption charges. The cases have been under discussion for a long time now. Jonathan Cook has wrote for this site over a year ago, how the Netanyahu scandals “reflect corruption at the heart of Israeli society”.

I will not go into further detail regarding Netanyahu in this writing, as I will explain later. Right now, I want to relate to another publication from last week, and draw a comparison to Netanyahu. This is an interview with Israeli author Tom Segev, who has just published a new book called “David Ben-Gurion: A State at All Costs”. He was interveíewed by Ofer Aderet in Haaretz, and the piece is titled “In Bed With Israel’s First Prime Minister: Historian Exposes David Ben-Gurion as You Never Knew Him” 

Indeed, as the title suggests, the novel aspect of this new book appears to be the new discoveries about Ben-Gurion’s sex life – where he had four mistresses, and where one of them was a steady sexual relationship lasting 40 years from 1926. Segev managed to reach these details through archives that were saved under the name of the mistress Rivka Katznelson. Segev’s curiosity about the relationship surged when the archive of the Israel Defense Forces and the Defense Ministry, which has a file under the name “Rivka Katznelson,” refused to open it to the public “for reasons of personal privacy.” Segev nonetheless managed to access Katznelson’s personal material in the Genazim archive, after Katznelson’s niece gave her consent to his perusal of the documents.

What I found even more interesting than Segev’s revelations, were his appraisals in the interview, of why this mattered, and what he thought of Ben-Gurion in light of this.

Segev responds to the question of where the boundary runs between cheap gossip and material of historical value, and why he interested himself in Ben-Gurion’s sex life: “The first answer is the standard one – that if the leader isn’t faithful to his wife, maybe he’s not faithful to his voters, either. If he cheats on her, maybe he cheats on them, too,” he says.

That’s fair enough. And this brings us immediately to the bridging notion between marital unfaithfulness and cheating in general. Corruption is cheating, in general, so I would say there’s a connection.

But interestingly, Segev opines that “Ben-Gurion was not a corrupt person”. He says this just after comparing him to Netanyahu:

“Ben-Gurion has become very popular in recent years,” he notes. “There’s hardly a day when he isn’t mentioned in a newspaper.”

(Aderet): What’s the reason, do you think?

(Segev): “There are powerful longings for a leader with integrity. The explanation, of course, lies in one word: Netanyahu.”

So for Segev, Ben Gurion is still “not corrupt”, and he’s indirectly suggesting he was a leader with integrity (albeit beset by “weaknesses and distress” as he calls it).

Segev again alludes to Netanyahu in pointing out just how Ben Gurion was “not corrupt”:

“He didn’t smoke cigars, didn’t drink champagne, and he chose to go third-class on a ship and share his cabin with other people”, Segev says.

Segev lightly mentions that it still  is possible to talk about corruption in connection with Ben Gurion:

“For example, there’s a problem regarding the house he bought in Tel Aviv, because it can’t be definitely established that he paid back all the loans he received from the Histadrut [labor federation] and from the bank. He also didn’t always pay for the thousands of books he bought”, Segev says (detailed reference for this here).

But all in all, Segev appears to believe that Ben-Gurion was definitely not corrupt – supposedly because he didn’t smoke cigars or drink champagne, even though he had systematic extra-marital affairs and even though he didn’t pay for his books and house.

Alright, let’s pause there.

We know that smoking cigars and drinking champagne are not crimes in themselves. It is always about something other than the appearance. It does not matter if Netanyahu did not ever cheat on his wife. Still, he could be corrupt by other means. The champagne and cigars don’t corrupt him per se. It’s about a bigger picture, that can have many appearances.

Now, was Ben-Gurion really a “man of integrity”?

When I was about 15, I had attended a lecture by the legendary professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz. Leibowitz is the one who coined the term ‘Judeo-Nazis’, and was hailed as “one of the greatest figures in the life of the Jewish people and the State of Israel in recent generations” by Former President Ezer Weizman, who added that he was “a spiritual conscience for many in Israel.” Leibowitz said something at that lecture which I never forgot. It was one short sentence:

“Ben-Gurion was a man of many virtues. Truth was not one of them”.

At the point, I was ignorant of the details of Ben Gurion’s deceptions. Nonetheless, Leibowitz’s sentence was etched in my consciousness, perhaps due to the shock effect of having this heroic persona (Ben-Gurion) simply being called a liar. It was only many years later, that I began to learn about the details of Ben Gurion’s corruption on the grand national scale.

In 1937, Ben-Gurion wrote to his son Amos how acceptance of Partition (it was the Peel Commission partition plan) was not an end but a beginning:

“My assumption (which is why I am a fervent proponent of a state, even though it is now linked to partition) is that a Jewish state on only part of the land is not the end but the beginning. When we acquire one thousand or 10,000 dunams, we feel elated. It does not hurt our feelings that by this acquisition we are not in possession of the whole land. This is because this increase in possession is of consequence not only in itself, but because through it we increase our strength, and every increase in strength helps in the possession of the land as a whole. The establishment of a state, even if only on a portion of the land, is the maximal reinforcement of our strength at the present time and a powerful boost to our historical endeavors to liberate the entire country.”

In other words, Ben-Gurion knew fully well, that any acceptance of a partial territory is not committing. It’s just a means of getting some legitimacy, from which to grow power and with which to eventually “liberate the entire country”.

When it came to 1948 and the Israeli Declaration of Independence, the US Truman administration wanted to know precisely what borders the Declaration referred to (as it was vague in territorial matters, although referring to UN 181 ‘Partition Plan’ as its ‘legitimacy’ and that it was ‘irrevocable’). Jewish Agency agent Eliahu Sasson thus wrote a memo to President Truman, stating that “the state of Israel has been proclaimed as an independent republic within the frontiers approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations in its resolution of November 29th, 1947” (resolution 181). It took Truman only a few minutes to make the official recognition.

But Ben-Gurion knew that such ‘frontiers’ were only a start, and not an end.

It turns out, that in April 1947, five months before the 1947 UN ‘Partition Plan’, Ben Gurion was proposing his own ‘partition map’ to the British Cabinet. This also appears in Segev’s new book, and he managed to track down the map in the British National Achive (it is provided in the Haaretz article). The map is strikingly similar to the ‘Green line’ of the 1949 ceasefire lines (which ended up being 78% of historical Palestine), albeit appropriating the whole of the Gaza strip to the Jewish State.

Segev opines that “Ben-Gurion already had the results in his head”.

And why was the west Bank not part of the Jewish State in Ben-Gurion’s map? Well, let’s remember, that this still had to resemble “partition” rather than a complete Zionist takeover. The British had their own plans, which involved what has been referred to as the policy of “Greater Transjordan”. The Jordanians would get a part of Palestine, and in return, they would not unleash their force against the Jewish State.

Israeli-British historian Avi Shlaim:

“The policy of Greater Transjordan implied discreet support for a bid by Abdullah [King of Transjordan], nicknamed ‘Mr Bevin’s little king’ by the officials at the Foreign Office [Bevin was Foreign Secretary], to enlarge his kingdom by taking over the West Bank. At a secret meting in London on 7 February 1948, Bevin gave Tawfiq Abul Huda, Jordan’s Prime Minister, the green light to send the Arab Legion into Palestine immediately following the departure of the British forces. But Bevin also warned Jordan not to invade the area allocated by the UN to the Jews.  An attack on Jewish state territory, he said, would compel Britain to withdraw her subsidy and officers from the Arab Legion. [….] If Bevin was guilty of conspiring to unleash the Arab Legion, his target was not the Jews but the Palestinians. [….][B]y supporting Abdullah’s bid to capture the Arab part of Palestine adjacent to his kingdom, Bevin indirectly helped to ensure that the Palestinian state envisaged in the UN partition plan would be still-born.” 

So Ben-Gurion was aware that imperialist concerns need to be taken into account. And he went with it for a while. It is doubtful that without such arrangements, the nascent Israel could actually have succeeded to conquer so much more of historical Palestine as it did in 1948.

But as Ben-Gurion wrote to his son above, “this increase in possession is of consequence not only in itself, but because through it we increase our strength, and every increase in strength helps in the possession of the land as a whole”. And then came 1967, and the task was territorially completed.  

All these things are colonialist conspiracies which are corrupt in their very essence. In fact, Israel’s second Prime Minister Moshe Sharett had noted this aspect clearly:

“I have learned that the state of Israel cannot be ruled in our generation without deceit and adventurism. These are historical facts that cannot be altered”, he said. 

So even according to Sharett, Ben Gurion had to be a deceitful leader.

Now, has this essentially changed much? I would say not. The deceit that Zionism applies in order to cover up for its colonialist designs to erase Palestine is a constant factor, and the goal is always corrupt. It’s even genocidal in its very essence. Author and journalist Ben Ehrenriech:

“The question about genocide– yes, it’s an incremental genocide. And I think that’s a word that gives a lot of people pause and it certainly should. We don’t see the absolutely mass slaughters, although in Gaza I think we’ve seen something very much like it that we usually associate with genocide. But– the attempts to erase a people, to just erase them, to erase their history, I think follow a logic that can only be called genocidal.”

So what is the place of corruption at the level of bribery, extra-marital affairs, unpaid bills, cigars and champagne measured against that grand-scale horror? Indeed, the bigger picture brings these things into perspective.

This is why Netanyahu’s personal corruptions, measured against the grand scale, are somewhat irrelevant to Palestinians. And it’s not like there’s hope ahead, even if he does resign. Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy wrote last week that “we may miss Netanyahu yet”, listing the options, and focusing particularly on the ‘centrist liberal’ Yair Lapid, whom I call ‘the pretty face of ultranationalism’ – the man with the motto “maximum Jews on maximum land with maximum security and with minimum Palestinians”. Levy says about Netanyahu that “his heirs may steer clear of cigars and champagne, but none of them can fix Israel’s great corruption – the institutionalized state corruption arising from 50 years of occupation”.

I think Levy is being too generous, too mild, even too apologetic. That corruption goes back way further than 50 years.

Personally, I have generally refrained from going into detail of Netanyahu’s personal corruptions in all my writings so far. I have instinctively felt, that doing so contained the danger of distracting from the greater national corruption. This is also why I haven’t gone into detail here. I’m not saying Netanyahu’s personal corruption or Ben-Gurion’s personal corruption are irrelevant. But if you really think about the Palestinians, they have been nationally raped by Zionism from the start. You can’t do that and still be a “man [or woman] of integrity”.

 

CAN YOU NAME A WORLD LEADER WHO IS NOT A CRIMINAL?

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in danger of being brought down, possibly soon, over what initially appears to be little more than an imprudent taste for Cuban cigars and pink champagne.

In truth, however, the allegations ensnaring Netanyahu reveal far more than his personal flaws or an infatuation with the high life. They shine a rare light on the corrupt nexus between Israel’s business, political and media worlds, compounded by the perverse influence of overseas Jewish money.

Of the two police investigations Netanyahu faces (there are more in the wings), the one known as Case 1000, concerning gifts from businessmen worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, is most likely to lead to his downfall.

But it is the second investigation, Case 2000, and the still-murky relationship between the two cases, that more fully exposes the rot at the heart of Israel’s political system. This latter case hinges on a tape recording in which Netanyahu plots with an Israeli newspaper tycoon to rig media coverage in his favor.

Leads from both cases suggest that Netanyahu may have been further meddling, together with his billionaire friends, in the shadowy world of international espionage.

Cigars and champagne

Netanyahu’s appetite for a free lunch has been common knowledge in Israel since his first term as prime minister in the late 1990s. Then, he was twice investigated for fraud, though controversially charges were not brought in either case. Police discovered along the way that he and his wife, Sara, had horded many of the gifts he received during state visits. More than 100 were never recovered.

The clarifications that were issued more than 15 years ago, as a result of those investigations, make it hard for Netanyahu to claim now that he did not understand the rules. According to justice ministry advice in 2001, government and state officials cannot keep gifts worth more than $100 without risking violating Israeli law.

The gifts Netanyahu received from one of the Israeli businessmen involved in Case 1000, Hollywood film producer Arnon Milchan, amounted to as much as $180,000. Netanyahu has argued that these presents, ranging from cigars to jewelry, were expressions of a close friendship rather than bribes to him in his capacity as prime minister.

The problem, however, is that Netanyahu appears to have reciprocated by using his position as head of the Israeli government to lobby John Kerry, the then U.S. secretary of state, to gain Milchan a 10-year U.S. residency visa. He may have done more. We will return to that matter later.

Also being investigated are his family’s ties to a friend of Milchan’s, Australian billionaire James Packer, who made his fortune in the media and gambling industries. Packer has similarly lavished gifts on the Netanyahu family, especially Yair, Netanyahu’s eldest son.

At the same time, Packer, now a neighbor of the Netanyahus in the coastal town of Caesarea, has been seeking permanent residency and the enormous benefits that would accrue with tax status in Israel. As a non-Jew, Packer should have no hope of being awarded residency. There are suspicions that Netanyahu may have been trying to pull strings on the Australian’s behalf.

Many of these gifts were apparently not given freely. The Netanyahus asked for them. Indicating that Netanyahu knew there might be legal concerns, he used code words – “leaves” for cigars and “pinks” for champagne – to disguise his orders to Milchan.

Police are reported to be confident, after questioning Netanyahu three times, that they have enough evidence to indict him. If they do, Netanyahu will be under heavy pressure to resign.

Pattern of corruption

Disturbing as these allegations of corruption are, Case 2000 indicates that this is about more than one prime minister’s dubious ties to wealthy patrons.

David Ansalem, a political ally of Netanyahu’s, observed on Facebook recently: “In the past 30 years, no prime minister was free from involvement in [police] investigations.”

Ansalem was suggesting that Israeli bribery and fraud laws are too strict, and can easily catch out an unwary politician. But the reverse is more likely to be true: politicians are rapidly corrupted by their pursuit of power in Israel. In short, the corruption in Israel is institutionalized.

Netanyahu’s predecessor as prime minister, Ehud Olmert, was similarly the subject of several different investigations, and is currently serving a jail term for fraud over his involvement in a massive real estate deal when mayor of Jerusalem. He was also convicted of receiving cash in envelopes from a U.S. businessman, Morris Talansky, in return for political favors.

Before Olmert, Ariel Sharon was at the centre of many investigations of dubious financial connections with businessmen, including Israeli real estate magnate David Appel and the British Jewish businessman Cyril Kern. Sharon fell into a long-term coma, and later died, before the investigations could lead to an indictment.

This week a corruption investigation against Isaac Herzog, the opposition leader, was dropped, though inconsistencies in his testimony were sharply criticised by Israel’s attorney general. The investigation led to the indictment of Herzog’s campaign manager and a businessman.

Also this week, a former chief rabbi of Israel, Yona Metzger, was convicted of bribery and sentenced to for three and half years.

20 super-rich families

Corruption is rampant in part because of Israel’s extreme concentration of wealth. This is a trend in much of the developed world, but its effects are accentuated in Israel by the small scale of the economy. Research shows that as few as 20 families control most of the country’s wealth, particularly in sectors like real estate, banking, retail, transport and homeland security. It seems some of these super-rich families expect to buy political influence as well.

But there is also a combination of conditions, particular to Israel, that blur the distinctions between the personal and institutional, and that have ensured corruption flourishes.

The climate was probably set in 1948, when Israel was established on the ruins of another society. The building by Israel’s elites of a new, supposedly more equal society in the agricultural communities of the kibbutz and moshav was possible only through the wholesale theft of Palestinian land and homes. The Absentee Property Law of 1950 sanctioned an orgy of plundering by Israel’s upper and middle classes. That foundational culture is hard to eradicate.

Further, Israel’s highly militarised society discourages resistance to authoritarian practices. A 2014 survey by the Israel Democracy Institute, for example, found that only one in three Israeli Jews regarded Israel’s democratic character as supremely important.

This trend is reinforced by the sanctity of Israel’s security sector, which includes not only the military, but the many intelligence services, including the Mossad spy agency, Israel’s arms manufacturers, homeland security and cyber warfare firms, as well as more conventional industries.

Trust in the Israeli military stands at 90 per cent, and half of the Jewish public believe the security services should be allowed to operate against terror without any legal oversight, according to a survey last year. The secrecy surrounding this sector – and the expansive definition in Israel of “terrorism” – inculcates a consensus in favor of concealment and a set of values in which corruption is likely to thrive.

Safeguards are further undermined by Israel’s fractured social structure – religious vs. secular, Ashkenazim vs. Mizrahim, veterans vs. immigrants, liberals vs. settlers. The resulting tribalism creates oppositional interest groups seeking favors and patronage rather than accountability and transparency.

Corruption is especially flagrant in land dealings, both in Israel and the occupied territories. In the Negev, in Israel’s south, for example, vast stretches of territory have been seized, often from Bedouin owners who are nominally citzens of the state, and reallocated as private ranches to Jewish families in a non-transparent planning process.

The institutionalization of corruption is evident in the behavior of leading officials, especially in the field of law enforcement. The police chief, Roni Alsheikh, and a supreme court judge, Noam Sohlberg, both have long records of lawbreaking, by living in settlements in the occupied territories in violation of international law.

Even more glaring is the fact that Avi Cohen, the government official in charge of monitoring and enforcing planning laws in Israel, chiefly against Palestinian citizens, lives in the West Bank settlement “outpost” of Palgei Mayim, which is in violation of Israeli law too.

The shadow economy

But the reach of Israeli corruption is global.

As a self-declared Jewish state, one that formally regards every Jew in the world as being personally invested in Israel, a network of personal and financial ties that are intentionally opaque has developed between Israeli businesses and officials, on the one hand, and overseas Jewish organisations, donors, investors and criminals, on the other.

Israeli authorities are aware that criminal gangs with international connections, often in the former Soviet Union, recycle their money in the Israeli economy, often laundering it in real estate purchases. A leaked U.S. embassy cable in 2009 warned that Israel was in danger of becoming a “promised land” for organised crime.

The Haaretz newspaper observed recently that this underground economy had become so big – with an annual turnover reaching as much $39 billion – Israel could find itself on the same list as Iran as “one of the leading state financiers of global terrorism”.

Some of this shadow economy is authorised at the highest levels. Israel confers privileged status on international Zionist organisations like the Jewish National Fund and World Zionist Organisation that funnel in donations from Jews around the world. These “charitable” organisations enjoy semi-governmental status, even though they can operate outside Israel’s laws.

The WZO setttlement division, for example, secretly pumps money into illegal settlements in the West Bank, hiding the money even from Israel’s state auditors. Funds are moved around out of sight, leaving plenty of room for corruption among officials, in addition to the inherent illegality of the settlement enterprise.

And then there are the Jewish tycoons from the US, Canada, Europe and Australia who treat Israel as part of their philanthropic investment portfolio. Their reasons include ideological zeal to realise a Greater Israel, salving their consciences for not living in Israel, or extending their influence to the “safe haven” they or their family may need in times of trouble.

Most Israeli politicians rely on overseas Jewish funders. Netanyahu won his Likud party’s primaries in 2014 exclusively with the help of foreign donors, all but one of them American.

Personifying this unhealthy external interference in Israeli politics is Sheldon Adelson, the U.S. casino magnate who is Netanyahu’s main patron. Adelson has done much more than channel donations to Netanyahu’s campaign coffers. He created a newspaper to get Netanyahu elected and keep him in office.

The free daily Israel Hayom, founded 10 years ago, is now the biggest-circulation paper in Israel and is known locally as Bibi-ton, or Bibi’s newspaper, in reference to Netanyahu’s nickname. A recent investigation by Haaretz found that Adelson had sunk an astronomic sum into Israel Hayom – some $190 million in its first seven years alone – to keep it afloat.

At the same time, Adelson has been sponsoring Republican politicians, including the new occupant of the White House, Donald Trump, to ensure he has an outsize influence in the U.S. as well. Trump’s sudden conversion to Netanyahu’s pro-settlement agenda coincided with his need for Adelson’s support in the presidential campaign.

War against the media

Adelson and his Israel Hayom newspaper are at the heart of Netanyahu’s current troubles. The tapes in Case 2000 are audio recordings of conversations between Netanyahu and Arnon Mozes, the Israeli owner of the Yedioth Ahronoth media group, which includes the country’s largest paid-for newspaper. Mozes’ desperate need to save his business empire appears to have driven him into Netanyahu’s embrace.

Adelson and Netanyahu’s aim in establishing Israel Hayom in 2007 was not only to create a propaganda platform for Netanyahu. It was also intended to drive rival papers, especially Yedioth Ahronoth, out of business by forcing down their income from advertising revenue. U.S. businessman Adelson’s pockets are much deeper than those of Israeli businessman Mozes.

This was effectively a vendetta by Netanyahu and Adelson against Mozes for using his media empire, which once enjoyed near-monopoly status in Israel, to damage Netanyahu and support rival politicians. Yair Lapid, a former columnist at Yedioth, is today leader of the Yesh Atid party, a potential challenger to Netanyahu for prime minister. He has in the past received strong backing from his former paper.

In the tapes, Mozes and Netanyahu discuss a deal that would guarantee the Yedioth media group cheerlead for Netanyahu in return for his government passing legislation to limit Israel Hayom’s circulation and possibly force it to charge a cover price. The pair appear to have broken off contacts some time before Israel’s general election in March 2015.

Had the talks succeeded, Netanyahu would have enjoyed almost blanket support in the mainstream press. The holdout would have been the liberal, and very small-circulation, Haaretz daily.

Netanyahu was not prepared to rest there, however. After the 2015 election he appointed himself the communications minister so that he would have regulatory power over Israel’s broadcasters. Since then he has been waging a concerted battle to intimidate Israel’s two commercial TV stations, Channels 2 and 10. Even after the latest revelations, he remains in charge of the communications ministry.

From Hollywood to Mossad

Cases 1000 and 2000 share at least one figure in common. Milchan gave Netanyahu extravagant gifts over many years, but he is also reported to have acted as go-between, bringing arch-enemies Netanyahu and Mozes together. Milchan has his own financial stake in the media, in his case a holding in the Channel 10 TV station.

In addition, Milchan introduced Netanyahu to sympathetic businessmen, including his friend Packer, to discuss taking the ailing Yedioth media group off Mozes’ hands. Only last October he arranged for media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s son, Lachlan, to fly to Israel for one night for a secret meeting with Netanyahu.

Milchan is undoubtedly at the centre of the shadowy world of power and finance that corrupts public life in Israel. Not only is Milchan a highly influential Hollywood figure, having produced more than 100 films, but he has admitted that he is a former Mossad agent. He used his Hollywood connections to help make arms deals and secure parts for Israel’s nuclear weapons program.

One can only wonder whether Milchan was not effectively set up in his Hollywood career as a cover for his Mossad activities.

But Milchan, it seems, is still wielding influence in Israel’s twilight world of security.

Yossi Cohen was appointed head of the Mossad a year ago, after a government vetting committee accepted that he had no personal ties to Netanyahu. But Cohen forgot to mention that he is extremely close to Netanyahu’s high-flying friends – connections that are now under investigation.

Milchan set up a global security firm in 2008 called Blue Sky International, stuffed with Israeli security veterans. Packer soon became a partner. They developed close ties to Cohen, first while he was a senior official at the Mossad and later when he headed Israel’s national security council.

Before Cohen was appointed head of Mossad in December 2015, the pair had hoped to recruit him to their cyber-security operations. Cohen received several gifts from Packer, in violation of Israeli government rules, including a stay at one of his luxury hotels.

A source speaking to Haaretz said Blue Sky had “more than [a] direct line” to Netanyahu. They “would pull him out from anywhere, at any time, on any occasion.”

According to Haaretz’s military analyst, Amir Oren, the new disclosures raise serious questions about whether Milchan and Packer twisted Netanyahu’s arm to parachute Cohen into the post over the favored candidate. In return, Packer may have been hoping that Cohen would authorise exceptional Israeli residency for him, classifying him as a security asset.

Beyond this, one one can only speculate about how Cohen’s indebtedness to Milchan, Packer and Netanyahu might have influenced his decisions as head of the Mossad. It was only a few years ago that the former Mossad chief, Meir Dagan, was reported to have wrestled furiously with Netanyahu to stop him launching a military strike on Iran.

Prosecution drags feet

It is unclear for the time being whether the revelations are drawing to a close or will lead deeper into Israel’s twin netherworlds of financial corruption and security.

But what has emerged so far should be enough to finish off Netanyahu as prime minister. Whether it does so may depend on the extent of Israel’s compromised legal system. Attorney general Avichai Mendelblit was appointed by Netanyahu and is a political ally. He appears to have been dragging his feet as much as possible to slow down the police investigation, if not sabotage it.

But the weight of evidence is looking like it may prove too overwhelming. As political analyst Yossi Verter observed: “There’s no way that a police commissioner … appointed [by Netanyahu] and a cautious attorney general, who in the past was part of his close circle and one of his loyalists, would be putting him through the seven circles of hell if they weren’t convinced that there’s a solid basis for indictment and conviction.”

The next question for Netanyahu is whether he will step down if indicted. He should, if Olmert’s example is followed. But his officials are citing a 1993 high court ruling that allows a cabinet minister under indictment to remain in office. Certainly if Netanyahu chooses to stay on, his decision would be appealed to the court again. However, the judges may be reluctant to oust a sitting prime minister.

The court of public opinion is likely to be decisive in that regard. A recent poll shows few Israelis believe Netanyahu is innocent of the allegations. Some 54 per cent think he broke the law, while only 28 believe him. Opinion, however, is split evenly on whether he should resign.

Where next?

If past experience is any measure, Netanyahu will try to turn public opinion his way by increasing friction with the Palestinians and exploiting the international arena, especially his relations with the Trump administration. He may be expected to encourage Trump at the very least to posture more stridently against Iran.

Nonetheless, most observers assume Netanyahu is doomed – it is simply a matter of when. The odds are on an indictment in late spring, followed by elections in the fall, say Israeli analysts.

At this stage, none of his political rivals wants to be seen stabbing Netanyahu in the back. Most are keeping quiet. But behind the scenes, political leaders are hurrying to forge new alliances and extract political concessions while Netanyahu is wounded.

Naftali Bennett, the settler leader, is pushing aggressively for annexation of Ma’ale Adumim, a large settlement strategically located close to Jerusalem, as a prelude to further annexation of parts of the West Bank.

Who might succeed Netanyahu? Yair Lapid, of the centre-right Yesh Atid, is heading the polls, but that may in part reflect the disarray in Netanyahu’s Likud party. In a sign of where the deeper currents in Israeli society are leading, a Maariv poll last week showed that settler leader Naftali Bennett would win an election if he were to head the Likud.

Netanyahu now needs the help of all the powerful friends he can muster. His biggest ally, U.S. casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, may not be among them. After the revelations that Netanyahu was conspiring against him with Mozes, Adelson has cut back on Israel Hayom’s circulation and is reported to be offering less favorable coverage of the Netanyahus.

That could prove the final straw, sealing Netanyahu’s fate.