Michael Shaked is still considered a legend in the State Attorney’s Office. In the 1980s and 1990s he served as the prosecutor in the trial of John Demjanjuk, the Ukrainian murderer from the concentration camps with the blood of thousands of Jews on his hands.
Demjanjuk was initially convicted and sentenced to death, but after the Iron Curtain fell, Shaked discovered evidence in the Soviet archives that raised doubts regarding Demjanjuk’s identity. He did not hesitate for a moment, and presented the material to the judges, thereby leading to the acquittal of the man Shaked had asked to send to the gallows.
Justice before victory, truth before professional achievement. It is no wonder that this story became a foundational myth in the State Attorney’s Office, until it found its way into a book edited by former Deputy Attorney General Dina Zilber for Israel’s 70th anniversary. The chapter was written by attorney Yonatan Kramer, one of the most senior and substantive figures in Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miarah’s circle.
Fortunately for Shaked, he no longer works for the State Attorney, otherwise he would certainly have been reprimanded by Baharav-Miarah and left to sit alone in the cafeteria. This week, when a senior police investigator sought to testify in Benjamin Netanyahu’s trial about suspected criminal acts committed during the investigation into the prime minister, the prosecution’s representatives immediately jumped up and shouted “Objection!”
They apparently have not read the chapter about Michael Shaked, nor late Supreme Court President Miriam Naor’s speech: “The state can never lose a trial, because the public interest is the state’s interest.” When you think that you are the state, it’s no surprise that you don’t grant Netanyahu what you granted even to Demjanjuk.
The shock at the criminal behavior of IDF Military Advocate General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, which only intensified after her fake suicide attempt, echoes the same suspicion: that the institutions entrusted with enforcing law and justice care less about law and justice—and more about protecting themselves.
Still, very senior police officials claimed this week in their defense that it was not negligence or insiders that caused the delay in the military advocate general’s arrest, but the need to find evidence. At the center of the criticism against them is the fact that the resigning major general learned of the investigation from the IDF and was then given many days to prepare a defense.
We had no choice, say the officials. Precisely because Tomer-Yerushalmi had shown such increased interest in the polygraph of her subordinate, it was impossible to pull the junior officer out of the Military Advocate General’s Corps without arousing suspicion. Had we questioned her before reasonable suspicion was established, we might have destroyed her career only to discover a month later that there was nothing to the suspicion.
In the same vein, opponents of the legal establishment are likely to be sorely disappointed even now that the missing phone was retrieved from the depths of the sea. If the military advocate general had incriminating evidence about the attorney general, she would surely have bargained with it in exchange for recognition as a state witness. The more substantial claim against Baharav-Miarah concerns her assistance in defending the fictitious leak investigation conducted by the military prosecution.
A Supreme Court justice expressed shock this week at the misrepresentation by Baharav-Miara’s people regarding the supposed tight supervision of the investigation. He will make his views known, if he is assigned to oversee the petition. The Supreme Court is waiting to see which panel President Yitzhak Amit will appoint—after all, he is the attorney general’s bodyguard.
The above is an excerpt from my Shabbat column in Israel Hayom. Read it on Israel Hayom’s website here.
