The Katsav Verdict

http://stevenplaut.blogspot.com/

I think I would be more inclined to believe that justice was done
in the trial of Moshe Katsav if the Israeli leftist chattering
classes, led by Shimon Peres himself, were not running about giddily
pronouncing that the trial proves that Israel has one single uniform
fair justice system for all.

It does not.

Israel has a dual justice system, under which one standard of
justice applies to far leftists and another to everyone else.

The Israeli judicial system is corrupt and highly politicized. It
is biased and functions in many ways as an appendage of the radical
Left, and this is true going all the way to the top of the system,
where so many of the country's senior jurists are still openly
practicing and preaching courtroom political bias in the name of
"judicial activism."

The court system refuses to defend the basic constitutional
rights, especially freedom of speech, for non-leftists. At the same
time it refuses to prosecute and indict Arabs and leftists for treason
even in the most egregious cases. Some Arab judges misuse their
courtrooms as arenas of a judicial intifada against Israel. The
courts castrate the military and prevent Israel from fighting
terrorism properly. The judicial system openly persecutes "rightists"
and "settlers," denying them their constitutional rights. All the
while pandering to the political petitions of the Far Left.

So while the self-righteous chatterers are patting themselves on
the back over Israel's judicial system being so fair and equitable, it
behooves us to wonder out loud if Moshe Katsav would be headed to
prison if he were a leftist. It also behooves us to wonder if he
would be headed to jail had he not trashed Shimon Peres in the
Presidential election of 2000, when Katsav blocked Peres and his Labor
Party minions from seizing the Presidency. (Peres did manage to
become President later, but he and his Labor Party bolshies always
nursed a grudge against Katsav.)

Moshe Katsav was well liked before the charges of sexual
misbehavior were raised against him, much better liked than Shimon
Peres. Large protions of the Israeli general public and several
leading jurists in Israel are still convinced that Katsav is innocent
and was railroaded, perhaps as political payback.

Me personally? I have no doubt that Katsav was always a lech and a
skirt chaser and I believe he did engage in inappropriate sexual
advances against anything with two X chromosomes. An Israeli Bill
Clinton. But did he actual perpetrate violent rape? The court says
he did. The court might be correct. And it might not be. I reserve
the right to retain a bit of skepticism.

There have been too many abuses of public trust and too many
politicized decisions by the Israeli courts to presume in all cases
that they are competent and reliable and fair and objective . The
burden of proof is today upon the courts to prove they did not judge
Katsav in a politically biased manner. It is the fault of politicized
judges that things have gotten to this - where the courts themselves
must convince the public that they did not produce politicized
miscarriages of justice.

I have no evidence that the Katsav conviction was such a
miscarriage. But I am not willing to presume that Israeli judges are
ALWAYS neutral and fair until proven biased. There are too many cases
that have already proved otherwise.