Who is destroying the rule of law? - Haaretz
Who is destroying the rule of law in Israel? After years of hearing a particularly shrill choir scream about the existence of one enemy to the justice system, the arch-Satan, demon of destruction, Benjamin Netanyahu by name, suddenly we learn that the true enemy comes from within the system. The police used the Pegasus software to track (at least) one of the state’s witnesses against Netanyahu.
The scope of the rot is yet to be fully revealed, as is the degree of involvement by the prosecution and the scope of malicious surveillance. The lies of the police, its officers, and the minister overseeing them are a grave matter, but one conclusion is already clear: The police, and perhaps the prosecution as well, have decided to incriminate Netanyahu by nearly any means necessary.
It is becoming clear that his and his supporters’ claims were true, at least to some degree. Perhaps not outright framing – that will be revealed in the trial – and not the overthrow of a sitting prime minister by the justice system, but certainly an unbridled manhunt to incriminate him. Someone wanted to see Netanyahu brought to justice. Wanted it very, very much.
In a grim twist of fate, the man who promoted the sale of NSO’s products to dark regimes for diplomatic benefit to Israel, fell victim himself to the same filth. The Golem has risen on its maker in a particularly ironic manner. But this does not minimize the gravity of using this poisonous tool against him. It would have been best had Pegasus never been born, or at least not in Israel, and still – there is a difference between countries using it against external enemies and using it to incriminate its own citizens – in some countries, dissidents; in another, a sitting prime minister.
There is excessive, sanctimonious hysteria in Israel over NSO. Double standards are working overtime. A country that sells almost any regime devastating devices of destruction – including some particularly vicious weapons, from unmanned drones that wipe out lives with the touch of a joystick, to various types of cluster bombs – cannot get in a tizzy over spyware. At least spyware doesn’t kill; not directly, anyway.
In addition, a country that assassinates dissidents in its occupied territories and enemy scientists in other countries cannot get excited over the murder of a Saudi journalist. Indeed, the Israeli software’s complete invasion of privacy is outrageous and repulsive, but some of the weapons Israel exports are far more gruesome, and no public debate is held on them. On the contrary, they are the pride and joy of the nation. The fact that five million people live their lives exposed to some Israeli Pegasus or other, day and night, in Gaza and in the West Bank, annuls the moral right to be appalled by the use of these tools within sovereign Israel.
But in any event we must not minimize the gravity of the use of invasive surveillance to incriminate citizens, let alone without authorization. And when it concerns a sitting prime minister this problem only grows more urgent, due to the political implications of the effort to overthrow him. That’s how it always is with a slippery slope. You invent a monstrous weapon to fight terrorism, and eventually use it against a prime minister. Once the forbidden weapon is in the arsenal, it will be used for any purpose. Skunk water in the territories? Now they use the skunk against the Haredim too. NSO’s skunk is particularly malodorous. It was used on Netanyahu.
The Netanyahu trial is ongoing. Thus far it has been hard to point to the smoking gun that would justify the serious charges and the hateful public atmosphere, but there’s a long way still to go. There will always be the next state’s witness, who will be described by prosecutors and Netanyahu’s foes as the man who will deliver the goods. Now the surveillance target Shlomo Filber is center-stage. Tomorrow it will be someone else. That is why this surveillance is so destructive. It strengthens the public feeling that Netanyahu is indeed being persecuted.
Netanyahu himself sounded upset over the weekend. People around him talked hyperbolically of an earthquake. But underneath the pretense of a storm, which they know how to harness to their benefit, there lay the feeling that another Pegasus is yet to come, and with it his trial will implode. Now it will be even harder to refute that.
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source: https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-who-is-destroying-the-rule-of-law-1.10593648
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