You've probably heard the resounding response of the candidate for prime minister, Yitzhak Herzog, to the investigation into the massive corruption in Yisrael Beiteinu.
Who hasn't heard? It's also unnecessary to bore you with a repeat of the sharp statements of the candidate for prime minister, Tzipi Livni, on this matter. Not surprising. She has always been on the side of purity, ever since the time she stammered herself to know in the face of the investigations of Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert.
The presumption of convenience, uh, innocence, you know.
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And Kahlon? Oh, what a passion to eradicate corruption and fundamentally change this rotten system was in his (frightened) gaze when he was asked about this on Wednesday.
Two days later, the knight of reforms and revolutions managed to extract from himself, with great effort, some kind of statement on the subject. Kahlon said he was sad and that corruption was undermining trust in government. Walla.
I, by the way, was very happy about this investigation, but I did not build a political alliance with Yvette.
As for Netanyahu, it's even unnecessary to joke. When he was still Ariel Sharon's rival, I asked him why he never said a word about Prime Minister Sharon's corruption scandals. Netanyahu said with surprising candor that he would be reminded of all his scandals and therefore prefers to remain silent.
It is doubtful whether this is the reason that leads him to remain silent about the new terrible affair. It is likely that he has long since lost the ability to be disgusted by such phenomena.
The investigation into Yisrael Beiteinu mainly revealed rot at the top of the bureaucracy. In order for government support, even coalition funds, to be accurately transferred to an organization that has been designated by various vested interests, a series of officials, accountants, and legal advisors need to turn a blind eye.
No less depressing – a series of council and non-profit leaders apparently realized that their only way to get support was to bribe the senior figures in Yisrael Beiteinu. They thought this was the norm and, apparently, they had good reason to believe so.
This norm, according to suspicions, did not prevail in just one ministry, but in a number of ministries – the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of the Interior, and the Ministry of Tourism.
And all these terrible things are happening, and the leaders of our parties – a bunch of cowards like them – sit and say nothing, God forbid, the honorable Minister Lieberman, who is known as a vengeful and vigilante, will not hear them clucking their tongues and will erase them from his preferences for a future coalition. Terrible.
And if they are already silent, hypocritical, and blind to all sorts of things, then there happens to be a minister from Yisrael Beiteinu sitting in the Ministry of Public Security.
The investigation concerns the Drug Enforcement Administration, which is under his command, but he knew nothing. The things allegedly happened in front of him, by his side, and behind him, but Aharonovich, as usual, knew nothing and heard nothing.
In this sense, it was nice to hear at least some of the Labor Party members: Shelly Yachimovich, Moshe Mizrahi, and Mickey Rosenthal, not considerate of their party leader's burning desire to flatter Yvette.
Even a new candidate in the party, like Eldad Yaniv, who is supposedly supposed to flatter Mapai operatives right now, to convey to them that if elected, he will let Bozi add Yvette to his government, raised a clear voice against Faina and her party.
Herzog and Livni, who were currently willing to pay Mrs. Kirshenbaum's legal fees out of their own pockets, must have realized how difficult it would be to get Yvette into their government (it goes without saying, and it's good that it goes without saying that Meretz and Zahava Gal'on reacted sharply to the new affair).
When the Netanyahu-Lapid-Bennett government was formed, the Finance Minister proudly announced that there were no coalition funds in this budget. This corruption, where each party receives money to decide what it wants to give money to, is over.
Bennett also boasted of the clean statement, which broadcast that the young people had come and destroyed the dirty tradition of their predecessors. Only the statements were simply false. The coalition funds continued to flow as always.
Even now Yair - "If only they hadn't stopped us in the middle" - Lapid doesn't explain how this happened to him and doesn't say anything sharp on the subject.
And Bennett? Bennett does not apologize for the zig-zag he made. The chairman of the Jewish Home spoke a lot in his first campaign against the flawed system. After taking office, he brought together exactly the people he spoke against and triumphed over the same tainted distribution of funds to exactly the same places. It is almost needless to say that he did not say anything significant about the new investigation. Perhaps he fears that a thorough investigation into the bones of the Jewish Home could reveal similar phenomena.
The fearful silence of our politicians perhaps explains how an honest man like Yair Shamir agreed to team up with Yvette Lieberman, let Lieberman appoint all the people around him, and allowed all of this to take place in the party and in the ministry.
Maybe during an election period, one of these frightened politicians will at least agree to guarantee that there will be no coalition funds in the next term?
• The article was published in Haaretz | From Raviv Drucker's website: http://drucker10.net
