Yaakov Neeman, Israel's Controversial Justice Minister
QUOTE
A glimpse
at the life of Israel's controversial justice minister
Prime ministers and influential figures
have never been far from justice minister Yaakov Neeman's side, but
controversy has been even closer.
Upon his return to the Justice
Ministry in March 2009, Yaakov Neeman wanted his staff to study a page
of Gemara (rabbinical analysis and commentary on the Mishnah ) every
week. He had introduced the practice in his flourishing law firm, but it
never got off the ground in the Justice Ministry. Neeman is rigorous in
his religious observance. During the Ten Days of Penitence he immerses
himself in Jewish texts. He frequently visits the Tomb of the Patriarchs
in Hebron and prays there on the New Moon. In Hebron he is usually
greeted by a few right-wing extremists who hurl crude curses at him.
"They don't know the scale of his contribution to the Jewish community
in Hebron," a Neeman confidant says.
Every Thursday evening, he attends a lesson given by
Rabbi Asher Weiss in Jerusalem. Two years ago, Neeman told a conference
on Jewish law that halakha (Jewish religious law ) should be binding
here. "We must return former glories and make the laws of the Torah
binding in Israel. This is truly the right way, to introduce Torah law
step by step," Neeman said, to thunderous applause from rabbis and
religious-court judges. He later claimed his words had been misconstrued
and since then has been careful to prepare written remarks in advance
and avoid potentially harmful off-the-cuff utterances. His self-image is
of a conciliator, a mediator and an arbitrator.
Yaakov Neeman was born in 1939 to a
religious-Zionist family in Tel Aviv. After graduating from the
prestigious Midrashiat Noam high-school yeshiva, he did military service
in the Golani infantry brigade. After being wounded in a squad
commanders' course, he transferred to the Gadna (Youth Battalions ) and
reached officer rank. He is married to Hadassah and is the father of six
children - five daughters and a son - most of whom are practitioners of
the free professions.
While studying law, Neeman took his first steps in
what would become a concurrent occupation: wielding influence in the
corridors of power. At the time he was the secretary of the National
Religious Party's faction in the Knesset. After completing his law
studies, he clerked at District Court for Judge Miriam Ben-Porat (later
a Supreme Court Justice ). He obtained a master's degree cum laude from
New York University, where he also obtained a doctoral degree (with a
dissertation on tax law ).
In 1972, at the age of 33, he founded a law firm:
Herzog, Fox & Neeman. His partners were future Israeli president Chaim
Herzog and Michael Fox. The firm, which specializes in commercial law,
went on to become one of the biggest in Israel. Many tycoons are
numbered among its clients, including Robert Maxwell, Daniel Abrahams,
the arms dealers Shoul Eisenberg and Marcus Katz, Charles Bronfman and
Jonathan Kolber. His friends note that in addition to representing the
well-heeled, he has also done pro bono work for those less well off.
They point especially to his extremely sensitive approach to the
families of fallen and abducted soldiers.
From an early age Neeman forged relations with the
political decision makers, which would stand him in good stead. In 1979,
Finance Minister Yigael Hurwitz appointed him the ministry's director
general. "Yaakov Neeman will become one of Hurwitz's biggest mistakes,"
Nahum Barnea wrote. "He is a lawyer who, as far as I understand, made
his fortune mainly thanks to two talents: a talent for advising clients
how to evade the tax authorities legally, and a talent for arranging
things for clients in the political establishment."
In 1981, Neeman left the treasury and returned to his
law office. Two years later, the banking industry stock shares crisis
erupted, in the wake of which the country's four largest banks were
nationalized. The 1986 report by the Bejsky Committee of Inquiry, which
investigated the chain of events, linked some of the finance minister's
problems to the behavior of his director general, Yaakov Neeman.
However, as Neeman had left two years before, no further responsibility
was placed on him.
Two months after the publication of the Bejsky
Committee report, Neeman played a key role in another episode which
rocked the country: the "No.300 Bus affair." It was Neeman who, together
with fellow attorney Ram Caspi, approached Neeman's former law firm
partner, Chaim Herzog - then the sixth president of Israel. They asked
Herzog to pardon the ranking Shin Bet security service officials, who
had lied about the circumstances of the deaths of two young Bedouin in
1984. They had been taken alive after hijacking No. 300 bus in 1984 but
then summarily executed by Shin Bet agents. Neeman drew up a legal
opinion for the political-security cabinet which validated the pardons
and buried the scandalous affair, which nevertheless resonates to this
day.
Neeman has had some kind of connection with every
prime minister in the past 20 years. He was friends with Yitzhak Rabin,
in recent years serving as chairman of the board of governors of the
Rabin Center. He also maintained good relations with Rabin's bitter
rival, Shimon Peres; his office represented the president's "baby," the
Peres Peace Center. Then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak wanted to appoint
Neeman governor of the Bank of Israel, but the move was blocked by
Barak's finance minister, Avraham Shohat.
After Ariel Sharon succeeded Barak as prime minister
in 2001, Neeman defended Sharon's son, Omri (at the time a private
citizen ), in a court petition which sought to prevent him from
mediating between his father and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Neeman was also on good terms with Sharon's successor, Ehud Olmert,
serving as a key witness in Olmert's trial on a charge of creating
fictitious tax invoices when he was treasurer of Likud (Olmert was
acquitted ). Neeman also submitted a legal opinion in Olmert's present
trial in Jerusalem, which is intended to assist the former prime
minister. In 1993, when Olmert was running for mayor of Jerusalem,
Neeman allocated rooms in his law offices for the campaign staff.
Alliance of the persecuted
In December 1995, Benjamin Netanyahu met with Neeman
privately. Netanyahu was then running against Shimon Peres in the
Knesset elections held after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, and the
polls predicted that Likud would lose. But Netanyahu had the air of a
winner. "Yaakov," he said, "I am going to appoint a government of
professionals and you are going to be part of my team."
Following his victory, Netanyahu invited Neeman to a
meeting at the Tel Aviv Hilton. Sitting next to the prime minister-elect
was a massive, bearded blue-eyed man. It was Neeman's first meeting with
the future director general of the Prime Minister's Office, Avigdor
Lieberman. The meeting would lead to a close friendship and a kind of
alliance of the persecuted.
The ties between the two became closer when Neeman
and Lieberman jointly conducted the coalition negotiations for Likud.
Neeman was appointed minister of justice in the new government. But two
months later, he was forced to resign in the wake of a police
investigation against him, which led to an indictment.
In December 1996, Neeman was charged with obstructing
justice, false swearing and perjury. The charges were in connection with
a 1991 police fraud squad investigation into Aryeh Deri, then interior
minister and the leader of Shas, and a deposition given by the
businessman Martin Brown. After a lightning trial, Neeman was acquited.
The judges noted that an affidavit of his contained factual errors but
that, in their view, these had been made "in good faith" and "without
the necessary criminal thought." For the full story on the indictment,
see Haaretz.com.
After the acquittal
Neeman emerged from the trial with a clear feeling of
being hunted and victimized. The experience was the formative event in
fashioning his loathing for elements in the State Prosecutor's Office
and the Israel Police. When Avigdor Kahalani, a former public security
minister, was acquitted on a charge of having leaked classified
information to a businessman who was under investigation - and being
appointed a director in one of the businessman's companies in return -
Neeman crossed the road from his office to the courthouse in Tel Aviv,
celebrated with Kahalani and invited him and his supporters to his
office for a toast. Neeman later offered advice and a comforting
shoulder to former defense and transportation minister Yitzhak Mordechai
when he was under investigation for sexual assault. (Mordechai was
convicted. )
Neeman was out to settle accounts with the state
prosecution. "You were one of the conspirators against me," he shouted
at attorney Yehoshua Resnick, who was questioning him on behalf of the
prosecution in the Deri trial in November 1997. (Resnick was actually
the only top-ranking prosecutor who was against indicting Neeman. ) "I
learned how someone can be framed," Neeman continued to lament about the
Deri trial. "The prosecution is not always guided by the light of the
truth."
But there are some who continue to believe that
Neeman's indictment was perfectly justified. "The state prosecution
never framed anyone, including that case," says the prosecutor in the
Neeman case, Ruth David, a former Tel Aviv District Prosecutor. "The
decision to go to trial was not easy but was merited. A good deal of
thought preceded the indictment, with the entire senior echelon of the
office taking part. The weight of the evidence in the case was such that
we had no choice but to go to trial and let the court decide whether
there was a reasonable basis for his conviction."
After the acquittal, Lieberman and former defense
minister Mordechai helped persuade Neeman to return to the government as
finance minister. Neeman held that post for more than a year before
resigning, going on a skiing vacation and then, two weeks later,
representing the magnate Erwin Eisenberg in regard to the sale of Israel
Chemicals to the Ofer family. Neeman was severely criticized in the
media for obtaining a tax exemption for Eisenberg from the same unit
where he had been boss just a short time before.
Neeman continued to stay in touch with Deri and even
visited him in prison after the latter's 2000 conviction for taking
bribes. He also continued to maintain very good relations with Avigdor
Lieberman.
In 2004, Lieberman left the Sharon government, in
which he had been transportation minister, and returned to private
business. His main occupation was as a salaried employee in a company
called M.L.1 - International Trading Company, Ltd., which his daughter
Michal, who was then 23, founded. Documents obtained by Haaretz show
that in the summer of 2004 Michal Chaya Lieberman signed - in the
presence of her father's personal legal adviser, attorney Sarina
Ben-David - both an application to establish the company and its
incorporation papers. The State Prosecutor's Office maintains that
Michal Lieberman was a cover for the person who held the real
controlling interest in the company: her dad, the present foreign
minister.
Lieberman holds Neeman in high regard and trusts him.
That was why he agreed to his appointment as justice minister. But in
private conversations Lieberman tells people who ask him about Neeman:
"I wanted [former justice minister Prof. Daniel] Friedmann to be
appointed minister of justice. Rubi [Reuven] Rivlin and Benny Begin came
to me and for an hour cajoled me to agree to Neeman's appointment. Was
it me who appointed him?"
Appointing judges
Asked what they see as Neeman's greatest achievement
in his three-year tenure as justice minister, people close to him say,
"After Friedmann, who was totally alienated from [Supreme Court
President Dorit] Beinisch and from the Supreme Court itself, Neeman
succeeded in forging a dialogue in the wake of which about 190 judges
have been appointed on his watch."
The Judicial Appointments Committee is one of the
most important entities in the country. It is comprised of the justice
minister, another minister, an MK from the opposition, an MK from the
coalition, three Supreme Court justices and two representatives of the
Bar Association. This is the group which determines the identity of the
Israeli courts, decided on judges for the Supreme Court and appoints the
head of the judiciary, the president of the Supreme Court.
Netanyahu assigned Environmental Protection Minister
Gilad Erdan (Likud ) as the second minister on the committee. There was
a real flap over the choice of the opposition MK. Coalition chairman
Zeev Elkin (Likud ) supported Uri Ariel (National Union ) for the slot,
against Roni Bar-On (Kadima ). Ariel defeated Bar-On by one vote and got
the post. MK David Rotem (Yisrael Beiteinu ) was chosen as the coalition
representative. "This is the first time in the country's history that
the government and the Knesset are sending four right-wing extremists to
this committee," Bar-On told the Knesset. "Now they need the fifth
person in order to elect the president of the Supreme Court ... There is
no one in charge in the Justice Ministry, but there is, regrettably,
someone with a vested interest."
The election of judges to all courts requires a
simple majority of five of the nine committee members. That is also the
majority needed to choose the president of the Supreme Court. In
contrast, the votes of seven members of the committee are needed to
elect a Supreme Court justice.
In August 2009, about four months after taking over
as justice minister, Neeman was able to get three new justices
appointed: Isaac Amit, Neal Hendel and Uzi Vogelman. "Despite the
suspiciousness toward him, he succeeded in bringing the sides closer to
him and obtaining agreements. This followed a long period under Daniel
Friedmann when it was impossible to appoint Supreme Court justices,"
says one of those involved in the committee's work.
A source involved in the process of choosing Supreme
Court justices under Neeman's baton last week described the minister's
conduct in bringing about the justices' appointment at the outset of his
term of office as "the art of mediation and arbitration." Neeman split
the committee in two and sent each group to a separate room. His group
was in one room, while in the other room was the bloc of three justices
and the representative of the Bar Association, attorney Rachel Ben Ari,
who was perceived as being identified with Justice Beinisch.
Neeman went from one room to the other, explaining to
each group why this deal was to its advantage. "It was very important
for him to be seen in the eyes of the committee as something different,
after the Friedmann period. Judicious, moderate and conciliatory," says
a source who is knowledgeable about the workings of the committee.
In a deal for the appointment of Supreme Court
justices, according to another source who is involved in the committee's
work, Neeman cobbled together agreements from both camps to appoint
District Court Judges Noam Sohlberg (a resident of the settlement of
Alon Shvut and the coveted candidate of the Neeman group ); Zvi
Zylbertal, a close associate of Beinisch; and Tel Aviv District Court
President Dvora Berliner. In the event, Daphne Barak-Erez, Uri Shoham
and Zylbertal received the Judicial Appointments Committee's full
backing to become Supreme Court justices on Friday. Sohlberg, meanwhile,
was backed by eight of the panel's members.
Neeman's initial deal was torpedoed by Beinisch, who
made it clear that the public atmosphere does not permit justices to be
elected at this time. In the view of some, this was Beinisch's way of
expressing her strong objection against Neeman's meddling in Bar
Association affairs and his silence in the face of some Likud members'
assaults on the Supreme Court (which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
put on hold last week ).
Beinisch will retire next month, but Neeman will
remain in office. In the past three years, a few politicians have heard
him contemplate resigning. No one need be surprised if he does. What's
certain is that he won't be sorry that Noam Sohlberg is on the Supreme
Court panel and if Asher Grunis is its president.
Final installment in the series on Yaakov Neeman,
"Signed, sealed, deposed: The letter that nearly did in Yaakov Neeman,"
will be posted on Haaretz.com later today.
UNQUOTE
He
managed to stay out of prison. So did Blair.
Neeman Beat The Perjury Raps
QUOTE
Signed, sealed, deposed: The letter that
nearly did in Yaakov Neeman
When a distraught businessman approached attorney Yaakov Neeman for advice
following testimony given to police about Aryeh Deri, Neeman told him to write
a letter qualifying the information. Five years later, that conversation
nearly spelled the end of Neeman’s rise to Justice Minister.
It all started with a seemingly innocuous meeting with businessman Martin
Brown at a Judaica exhibition in Jerusalem. By the end of the affair five
years later, Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman, then an attorney, would be
acquitted of obstructing justice, false swearing and perjury, despite the
judges admitting that Neeman’s affidavit contained factual errors. These
errors were made in good faith, they would rule in 1996, and “without the
necessary criminal thought.
Neeman’s meeting with Brown at the Judaica exhibition at the Jerusalem
Convention Center in 1991 was his first. Born in 1949, the son of a
Hungarian tailor, Brown immigrated to Israel at the age of 7 and moved to
London 28 years later. Today, Brown calls Neeman “rotten” and says he
regrets ever meeting him.
In May 1991, Brown met with Neeman in the latter's spacious office in
Tel Aviv. The consequences of that meeting would haunt Neeman for years to
come. Brown came to Neeman after having been interrogated for hours by the
police fraud unit, which was conducting the country's most sensitive
investigation at the time. The subject of the investigation was Aryeh Deri,
the leader of the ultra-Orthodox political party Shas, whose meteoric
political career had catapulted him to the powerful post of interior
minister.
It was Brown's second interrogation in the case; on both occasions he
provided information which seriously implicated Deri. Brown testified that
when Deri was director general of the Interior Ministry, Brown has hosted
Deri and his wife in London, underwriting the visit and bought Deri shoes,
cigars and clothing at Harrods. Brown later received money from another
Israeli, Moshe Weinberg, who was afterward the recipient of governmental
benefits from Deri. "I warned those around Deri not to pin their future on
him, because I foresee a bleak future for him," Brown said in his
interrogation. "My impression was that Deri is a corrupt official, a
megalomaniac who lost his sense of caution in the light of the expenses
which people, including me, pay him, and which he did not pay back.”
Neeman would later say that Brown appeared agitated and flustered in
the meeting. "It was a rough spectacle," Neeman stated in his court
testimony. "He was trembling, overwrought, in a very grim state of mind.
He said something terrible had happened to him, that he had testified to
the police and that they had got him to say things that were untrue."
Neeman told the court that he advised Brown to go back to the police
and tell the truth. When Brown declined, Neeman told the court, he advised
Brown to send himself a letter to London in which he would qualify some of
what he had told the police. Brown would thus possess irrefutable proof of
the date of the qualifications.
Brown sent himself a letter and remained in contact with the police. In
September 1992, more than a year after his incriminating testimony against
Deri, Brown gave the head of the police investigative team his version of
the meeting with Neeman. "The day after he gave his testimony to the
police, attorney Yaakov Neeman invited him to his office and asked him,
'Why are you people suddenly helping the police?' This repeated itself in
a number of meetings between them, including in London," Meir Gilboa, the
head of the police investigative team, wrote in a memorandum. The police,
however, decided not to question Neeman.
In February 1996, Neeman got a call from attorney Dan Avi-Yitzhak, who
was representing Deri. He said he was about to leave for London with a
team of prosecutors in order to depose Brown in connection with the
criminal trial against Deri. Avi-Yitzhak told Neeman that he had a copy of
Brown's letter of qualification and apprised him about the sensitive
information Brown had given the police. Neeman, for his part, gave Avi-Yitzhak
details of his conversations with Brown in connection with the Deri
investigation.
In June 1996, Deri, Avi-Yitzhak and representatives of the State
Prosecutor's Office traveled to London for Brown's deposition. In the
hearing, Brown retracted his entire incriminating account against Deri. "I
was under the influence of Prozac," Brown said, referring to the
antidepressant. He added that on the day after he gave testimony to the
police, he went to his lawyer, Neeman, and "cried" to him about the way
the investigation was being handled.
The prosecutor, Jacques Chen, also presented Gilboa's memorandum, in
which Brown alleged that Neeman tried to influence him not to testify
against Deri. For years afterward, Neeman would insist that this sensitive
document was resurrected four years after it was written for the sole
purpose of wrecking his tenure appointment as justice minister.
Brown was declared a hostile witness. The judges in the Deri trial
wrote that "Brown's version in the letter he wrote to himself is
contradicted by unequivocal evidence." Moreover, they said, "The
tape-recording [of the interrogation] shows that the conversation between
Brown and his interrogators took place in a relaxed and friendly
atmosphere. Brown spoke with his interrogators willingly and openly. He
said what he had to say freely."
Nevertheless, the court decided not to rely on Brown's contradictory
remarks. Even so, much of his incriminating testimony against Deri was
confirmed from other sources.
The astonishing development involving Neeman’s part in the self-sent
letter added new ammunition to a petition to the High Court of Justice
which had already been submitted against Neeman's appointment: a prima
facie suspicion of suborning the key witness in the Deri trial. Passions
ran high. Neeman submitted his response to the High Court.
Then Attorney General Michael Ben-Yair threw a bombshell. He announced
that he intended to conduct a quick police check in order to ascertain if
an evidentiary basis existed to justify a police investigation against
Neeman. "There are some in the State Prosecutor's Office who don't want a
minister who wears a skullcap," Neeman, who is religious, growled. He
alleged that Ben-Yair, whom he was about to replace, had more or less
subjected him to a witch hunt.
A few weeks later, Ben-Yair announced that he had decided to have the
police launch an investigation. In its course, the affidavit which Neeman
had submitted to the High Court was found to contain factual errors. The
state prosecution suspected that the mistakes were intended to blur the
ties between Neeman and Deri, disguise the nature of their relationship
and dispel the suspicion that Neeman tried to influence Brown's testimony.
Some months later, Neeman was charged with committing perjury, giving
false testimony and obstructing justice.
The original spark which had touched off the conflagration - the
alleged suborning of Brown - was not included in the indictment. To his
friends, Neeman, who resigned as justice minister as soon as the
investigation started, looked like a broken man. "When he was indicted, he
went to see two former justice ministers, and they simply spurned him. He
was shattered, lost a lot of weight and developed a heart condition. He
was like a carcass lying on the road," one of his friends relates.
"I pray to the Lord on high that I may be successful on my path,
because I do not see this as only my personal trial. I am living with a
profound feeling that the whole subject of placing people on trial is up
for your judgment," Neeman told the panel of three judges. His aim was to
transform the indictment against him into an indictment of the State
Prosecutor's Office. Neeman would continue to harbor this feeling for
years to come.
At the end of a lightning-fast trial, Neeman was acquitted. In regard
to one of Neeman's mistakes, the court stated, "We cannot rule out the
possibility that this is a flawed formulation, unworthy, but not a false
declaration."
In his testimony, Neeman called Brown a fantasizer. Speaking to Haaretz
from London recently, Brown, who speaks in third person, does not mince
his words and has a sense of humor, fired back at the justice minister.
Neeman, he said, "lacks a conscience."
Surprisingly, Brown now claims that Neeman did in fact try several
times to dissuade him from cooperating with the authorities. He also
denies ever telling Neeman that he lied to the police, as Neeman claims.
“"Under the skullcap resides someone who is my opinion rotten," Browns
said of Neeman.
Brown says he told the police only the truth about Deri. He adds that
after the interrogation he did in fact want something which would enable
him later to qualify the incriminating account. Hence the letter to
himself.
Brown says he decided not to tell the truth when he was deposed in
London because of pressure on him from others. "A whole industry arose in
order to neutralize the witness Brown. He was seen as a very dangerous
witness," he said. "I didn't have the guts to speak the truth in the
London deposition. I regret ever meeting that group."
UNQUOTE
d
Netanyahu Must Replace Justice Minister Neeman Says Haaretz
QUOTE
D
Netanyahu
must replace Justice Minister Neeman
The time has come to ask Netanyahu
whether he actually hopes Neeman's deceitful and unconstitutional maneuvers
will succeed, or whether he is committed to democratic values and
constitutional action.
Two years ago, this paper wrote:
"Yaakov Neeman's modus operandi - walking the fine line between truth
and lies, and apparently even crossing it - is inappropriate even for a
commercial lawyer, whose top priority is achieving results for his
client. It is intolerable for a justice minister."
The recent chain of events surrounding Neeman's
efforts to oust the Israel Bar Association's representatives on the
Judicial Appointments Committee - an attempt that was slated to include
retroactively canceling the Bar's elections - once again attests that
Israel's justice minister is a scoundrel.
The deceitful way in which Neeman
secured the bill's approval in the Ministerial Committee for Legislation
- as well as the way he subsequently advanced it, even though both the
bill and, in light of developments, its significance were changed
radically after the committee approved it - show that Neeman doesn't
even draw the line at misleading his colleagues in the cabinet. And when
both the Knesset and the Justice Ministry prepared legal opinions that
deemed the bill unconstitutional, Neeman didn't stop and study them; he
continued to advance the legislation.
To Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's credit, it
must be said that, unlike Neeman, he did listen to ministers Benny
Begin, Dan Meridor, Gideon Sa'ar, Limor Livnat and Michael Eitan, and MK
Carmel Shama-Hacohen (Likud), all of whom pointed out that Likud was
founded on the democratic value of constitutional conduct. He also
listened to Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein, who detailed the bill's
constitutional flaws. At the end of a dramatic day in the Knesset on
Wednesday, Netanyahu halted the legislative process.
This isn't the first time the prime minister has been
forced to call a last-minute halt to moves launched or backed by Neeman.
It's hard to understand what binds Netanyahu to his justice minister.
Far from solving problems, Neeman creates problems from which the prime
minister then needs to be extricated. Why does the prime minister, who
isn't known as an enemy of the rule of law, consent to retain a justice
minister who works tirelessly to undermine the rule of law?
The time has come to ask Netanyahu whether he
actually hopes Neeman's deceitful and unconstitutional maneuvers will
succeed, and is thus the justice minister's silent partner, or whether
he is committed to democratic values and constitutional action. And if
it's the latter, then he must replace his justice minister.
D
UNQUOTE
D
Israeli Justice Minister Accuses State Prosecutor Of Being Trigger Happy
QUOTE
Yaakov Neeman cited as having a very hostile attitude toward the media,
reportedly calling Haaretz 'Der Sturmer' - the Nazis' propaganda paper.
Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman has lashed out at State Prosecutor Moshe Lador in private conversations, accusing him of "marking targets and
filing indictments without sufficient evidence," according to sources
present at these discussions.
One of the examples Neeman cited was Lador's decision to indict
leading attorney Jacob Weinroth, who was subsequently acquitted in
court.
Neeman also accuses Lador of deliberately thwarting his effort to set
up an ombudsman for the prosecution, similar to the ombudsman that
exists for judges.
Though Neeman doesn't give interviews and claims he doesn't read the
papers, his private conversations reveal a very hostile attitude toward
the media. For instance, fellow cabinet members report that he called
Haaretz "Der Sturmer" - the paper that served as the Nazis' propaganda
organ.
This week, Neeman was at the center of a storm over his effort to
push through a controversial bill to change the composition of the
Judicial Appointments Committee. The bill, which would alter the way the
Bar Association's two representatives on the nine-member panel are
chosen, is opposed by Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein and the Justice
Ministry's professional staff; the former even announced this week that
if it passed, he wouldn't defend it against the expected challenge in
the High Court of Justice. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced
on Wednesday that he was freezing the bill.
The Bar Association representatives hold the balance on the
appointments committee between Neeman's four-member faction and the
three-member faction led by Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch. The
bill was submitted after it became clear that the new representatives
the Bar Association chose in November would align with Beinisch rather
than Neeman, giving her a majority. The proposed law states that instead
of the Bar electing whomever it chooses, it must elect one
representative from the association's majority faction and one from the
minority faction - thereby making it likely that the two representatives
would split their votes and thus give Neeman's faction a 5-4 majority.
The bill has been blasted by both cabinet ministers like Dan Meridor
and senior jurists. Prof. Yoram Shachar of the Interdisciplinary Center
in Herzliya, for instance, called it a "huge disgrace," adding that
Neeman was the first justice minister he can recall who "operates in the
shadows, out of unknown motives."
"Neeman conducts himself as justice minister the way he did as a
private lawyer," Shachar said. "But a justice minister can't operate
through manipulation and cunning. That's legitimate for an attorney, but
not for a minister."
Another IDC law professor, Uriel Procaccia, said he is "sorry we have
such a minister, who, by all indications, doesn't stand in the breach"
when the rule of law is attacked.
An article to be published in tomorrow's Haaretz Magazine in Hebrew
details Neeman's long-standing ties with leading politicians. Neeman's
law firm provided legal advice to Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman,
whom prosecutors have tentatively decided to indict, pending a hearing.
In 2004, after Lieberman resigned from the cabinet, he and his
daughter Michal met with Neeman to get legal advice on his planned
return to the business world. Neeman's office helped them set up the
company M.L., which is at the center of the draft indictment. The draft
indictment claims that while the company was officially run by Michal
and a Lieberman advisor, Sharon Shalom, in reality, Lieberman ran it,
and continued benefiting from the millions it earned even after he
returned to the Knesset and cabinet.
Neeman's spokesman, Amatzia Bar-Moshe, responded: "The justice
minister works constantly [to bolster] the independence and strength of
the prosecution and has frequently spoken about the prosecution's
importance and professionalism. The minister regularly meets with the
state prosecutor for routine professional meetings.
"At the same time, the minister has more than once noted the need for
an agency to supervise and oversee the prosecution's conduct; such
agencies currently exist in a variety of similar fields. All this is
done openly, transparently and through dialogue."
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