I doubt if I had the courage to say about the settlement leaders in Samaria what Joel Neuman says about them.
I'm not sure I would feel comfortable saying less than a month before the elections that those who were supposed to build Samaria, Benzi Lieberman and Gershon Mesika and their friends, received tons of money from the state to build houses in Samaria, and didn't really manage to use it for what they always convince us is the most important thing to do - build.
Yoel Neumann is one of the people who founded Yitzhar. Calling him right-wing is like saying that Michael Jordan is a basketball player. At one point when we accompanied him, Itay Rom and I, on a hill in Yitzhar, I said to him: Yoel, I have never met another extremist like you.
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He said: Am I an extremist? You should meet my son. As far as he's concerned, I'm a moderate.
Moderate? Give me an expression for this moderation, I asked.
Until a few years ago, Neumann replied, I was willing to give Damascus to the Arabs for fifty years in exchange for a true peace. He half-laughed.
Neumann served as a director of the Samaria Development Company. His legal action against the company's leaders has already been covered by Kalman Libeskind in Maariv and Haim Levinson in Haaretz.
Now the story has gained great momentum.
First, Neumann also handed over to the police a note from the company's accounting department titled "Miscellaneous.".
Under "miscellaneous" are all the payments that the police suspect are actually bribes. The company paid them, on the orders of the head of the Samaria Regional Council, Gershon Mesika, so that senior politicians would help erase the company's debts and obtain budgets for it.
These payments were made to various associates of senior Knesset members and ministers. In the recordings revealed by Baruch Kara, the CEO of the Samaria Development Company could be heard talking about this.
In an investigation on "Makor" tonight, we will actually examine how much truth he spoke, that same Haim Ben-Shoshan. We will dwell on each of these payments and the alleged connection to the political figure that the company wanted to visit.
The story, for example, about Moshe Gafni as chairman of the Finance Committee is nothing short of amazing.
The indirect bribery of politicians is only part of the story. The bigger story is different.
When Aiti and I began digging into the treasury, trying to understand where the Samaria Development Company's duplicate debts came from, how they were miraculously erased over the years, and what drives the mechanism, we discovered how high up in the hierarchy this story reaches.
Finance ministers for generations, from Benjamin Netanyahu, through Roni Bar On and ending with Yuval Steinitz, who convene discussions with Yesha leaders and distribute money to them, which will also be used to erase these debts, which were created for no justifiable reason.
A Ministry of Finance that writes off debts in the hundreds of millions of shekels, yes, hundreds, without reporting, without transparency, without reasoning. In addition to our conversations with current and former senior Finance officials on this matter, we also sent a request for an official response.
The Ministry of Finance simply couldn't come up with a response. The Budget Division threw the ball at the Accountant General, the Accountant General at the Budget Division. Madness.
And Neuman? He lives in a terribly modest house in Yitzhar, a house where he raised eight children, is unemployed, rarely shows emotions, but it's pretty clear that after the King of Samaria, Gershon Mesika, perhaps the most powerful figure in the Likud, was suddenly arrested, even the neighbors realize that the madman who lives next door, Yoel Neuman, may not have been talking so much nonsense.
From Raviv Drucker's blog: http://drucker10.net/?p=2595
