""There are judges in Jerusalem," said then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin in the 1970s (after the legalization of the settlement in Beit El), and since then he has been quoted whenever the court has its say on a public-political matter.
This, even though Begin pronounced the immortal sentence when the words of the judges in Jerusalem matched his political position, and they legalized Jewish settlement in Bethel.
What hasn't changed since Begin until now is the situation in which governance has shifted from the government to others. Sometimes to the judges, sometimes to the media, and recently, the government is intensifying in Lod, in the Lahav 433 police unit to combat serious national and international crime, public corruption, and criminal organizations.
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The absurdity is that the person who is leading the issue of governance in Israel and trying to return it to the hands of the government that was elected here with authority by the citizens is Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who repeatedly stars in embarrassing affairs, the equal side of which shows the government and its representatives that perhaps there is governance in Israel - but it is not in the Knesset.
Today, the one who sets the political agenda here is the police; not the government that has lost its governance. Lieberman may miss the days when there were judges in Jerusalem. But today, most of the judges who decide fates usually sit in Rishon LeZion.
There they give the required stamp to extend the detention of normative and non-normative interrogators.
And the judges in Jerusalem? More than once, the suspect is acquitted, after he has lost his life and money to prove his innocence. The presumption of innocence costs a fortune.
It is still too early to express a firm opinion regarding the "Yisrael Beiteinu affair." However, according to media reports from the "Metodrachm" by the police, it appears that absurd things are being investigated here, such as helping to keep a front-line emergency room in Kiryat Shmona; helping to fill out forms in order to receive larger budgets for certain places; or, even more absurdly, arresting a woman on suspicion that the money she received from her parents was not kosher money, supposedly. And perhaps they will soon arrest teenagers at kiosks on suspicion that the pocket money from their parents was not proper money.
The question is - is this the country we want to live in? True, there are such countries, but there is a price for it. And the public, including those who lead this line, needs to know what the price is.
It is clear to all of us that if an elected official and/or any other citizen breaks the law, he must pay the price. But it seems that from time to time there are those who raise the bar, suddenly turning what is improper into a criminal offense. What is gray into black. Sometimes, the citizen gets confused and doesn't know who launders what money. Is it politicians laundering the state's money, or the investigators laundering the coalition's money for bribes.
And as for the chorus that says, "We must clean out the stables" and let the law enforcement agencies do their job, and that this time it looks serious - all is well and good.
But taking a series of people, some of whom are salt of the earth, and locking them up behind bars as criminals, with media coverage that destroys the good name of the person, which he worked hard for for years - it seems excessive. Out of proportion. Unreasonable. And unfair.
The problem is that the losers from these stories are not only the people being investigated. The main loser is the state. More and more good people are saying, "What's this trouble to me?" They are fleeing public jobs and leaving them to mediocre and lower-level people. Many are also fleeing investments and businesses here in Israel.
So, it's true, the stables need to be cleaned, but if the 'horses' escape, what good will a clean, unused stable be to us, one that no one will be interested in?
Let's put ourselves in the shoes of senior businessmen who sit in front of the news and do a simple calculation: In the end, I will encounter an official who will destroy my life's work. An official in the form of an investigator or a government official, who has one hundred percent authority and zero percent responsibility, and in a momentary populism will announce, for example, that he is against a monopoly or duopoly. Because after someone has invested hundreds of millions, it doesn't look good on him.
In this area too, the bar is rising and rising. True, such things exist in certain countries, where sometimes it is not the officials who decide, but the local tyrants. But in the end, it doesn't matter to the businessman who makes the absurd decision - an official or a tyrant who rules the country - for him, the bottom line speaks.
Step by step, we have become a narrow-minded society that is ready to cut off a leg for itself, so that the other cannot stand firmly on his own two feet. And no one is able to stop the drift. Anyone who opens his mouth "against" is cataloged as a son of darkness. As aiding corruption. To centralization.
In general, it seems that centralization has become a dirty word in the Israeli economy. It's just that those who warn against it, against the concentration of power and might, have forgotten that in the end they may be left with the stamp in their hand, but there will be nothing to sign. The regulator will make decisions that will earn him headlines, but there will no longer be anyone left who will be interested in reading them.
This is not science fiction. If you listen to the jet conversations of the businessmen, you will understand that they just want to escape, and as far away as possible. They love the country, want to live here, are willing to pay taxes. They are true Zionists. But they do not want to do anything here, including nothing.
It is not for nothing that we tie things together. Arbitrary and outrageous decisions, a delusional and exhausting bureaucracy that takes the economy backward, cause an attempt to bypass the barriers in order to move forward, which often leads to the interrogation rooms. Although this is not a deliberate method, and we will say it again: it is forbidden to break the law; but the equal side of things is the rule of officials, who often leave you helpless.
And then they wonder why Israeli citizens are showing less and less involvement in elections. After all, it doesn't matter who they vote for - the officials are the ones who rule. So maybe it's time for us to elect them, and for them to appoint ministers and legislators.
What real authority does the minister have today? Barely any discretion. He only has responsibility. And if he is given coalition funds that he directs to things he deems appropriate, he may find himself in the interrogation rooms, or be pointed out as someone who deserves to be there.
Anyone who thinks that the governance problem can be solved by raising the threshold is completely wrong. We will once again get 6-7 mediocre parties with an expected unification of the Arab parties.
Lawmakers must establish a real "governance committee" that will give its opinion on the real rulers of the country, on the authority of officials and their ability to decide at will, due to their role as regulators, on the hundreds of millions of investors and business owners; on setting limits even for the investigating authorities.
Sometimes it seems to me that they are not investigating offenses - which is their role and duty, and for that we should be blessed - but rather are investigating people to search for and find offenses for them.
These absurdities must be stopped before we become, under the auspices of the officials, North Korea.
