""The truth," added the respected man, "none of the office officials understood why they hadn't given it out until now. Sure, why not publish it? Maybe you'll come clean sometime?" the man asked me.
I will censor my answer. It was not diplomatic.
Want more news, videos and stories? Join the Haredim 10 WhatsApp channel >>
What's the story?
During Naftali Bennett's tenure as Economy Minister, there was a long debate surrounding this fateful issue. The Freedom of Information Movement (and also Knesset members like Tamar Zandberg) wanted to know which businesses were approved to receive work permits on Shabbat.
You can turn the world upside down six times and not find a single logical reason why not to hand it over. Bennett's Ministry of Economy didn't want to. God knows why.
They started delaying answers, dragging their feet, mumbling something about trade secrets - a business that works on Shabbat must keep it a secret, makes sense - then they said they needed to ask all businesses that work on Shabbat what their position was on revealing the super-secret topic.
Eventually, the movement got fed up. Seven months ago, a petition was filed to force the ministry to reveal the terrible nuclear secrets.
The dragging of feet began again.
The Attorney General's Office, on behalf of the Ministry of Economy, announced in January of this year that the deadline for submitting the response "accidentally fell off the calendar" - it happens to everyone - and that they were going to hand over the requested material.
Somehow, it didn't help. They didn't deliver.
•
The month of May has arrived. Not just any May, May 18, about 48 hours after the Netanyahu government was sworn in, 24 hours after Aryeh Deri entered the Ministry of Economy.
It's a devil's errand, a court hearing on the issue was supposed to take place at this very time. Ahead of the hearing, Michal Shalem, an attorney from the Jerusalem District Attorney's Office, wrote to us: "The new minister is interested in examining the issue in light of the fact that many of the permit holders did not respond to the ministry's inquiry on the subject... Even if a hearing is held in the case, I will have no position to share, so there seems to be no point in holding the hearing anyway.".
Wow.
Deri entered the ministry and on his first day on the job, it's amazing, he's already taken care of, of all the issues in the world, the issue of issuing work permits on Shabbat. He didn't just take care of it, he already has new thoughts. Unbelievable. What an efficient minister.
But, wait. Didn't Deri's man say that only yesterday, three weeks after that hearing, the minister heard about it? Could it be that a respected attorney is providing false information? That's not the only reason that drove me crazy. Not even the fact that the same Economy Ministry officials who supported Bennett's decision not to hand over the material, turned their backs on them in an instant, it turns out, and supported Deri's decision to hand it over.
What drove me crazy?
I actually learned about this whole new decision by Deri from an official announcement from the Ministry of Economy. The ministry announced that it had decided to publish it to the general public. How wonderful.
This means that a journalist or social organization will wage a fight for freedom of information, pay money, spend their nerves, hire lawyers, and when the government office sees that the judge (Moshe Sobel in this case) doesn't understand what they want from his life, then they will publish it to everyone, precisely so that the petitioner won't get anything out, God forbid, and won't have the motivation to petition against them again.
This is not the first time we have encountered this. In fact, it seems to be a new policy of government ministries in their war on transparency. And unfortunately, it was echoed in a terrible decision by the Freedom of Information Unit in the Ministry of Justice, the same unit that is supposed to promote transparency.
Of all the things in the world this unit could have done for transparency, it chose to establish a new procedure under which any material the government agrees to publish will be posted on the Internet. How beautiful. How transparent. Only it's supposed to be beautiful and supposed to be transparent.
The meaning of this step is very simple: it is a creative way to combat the motivation of media outlets to submit freedom of information requests. What is the point for you? After all, even if you get the information, you won't be able to publish it first, because we will publish it ourselves to everyone.
Sure, you say, what's important to you is credit?
So the clear answer is 'yes'. Not just for me, for every journalist and every media outlet, if you know that you work and work and in the end you will get nothing out of this work, because the information, if it arrives, will be released to everyone, then journalists who are finally submitting freedom of information requests en masse will submit fewer.
There is one way to fight this deceitfulness of the Ministry of Economy – to submit more and more requests, oh, yes, and also to have the judge award them legal costs, for example, and say in the ruling what he thinks about such behavior by a government ministry and a respectable attorney.
• From Raviv Drucker's blog: http://drucker10.net/?p=2679
