Trial by a thousand leaks

I find it astonishing that a police commissioner would go on an investigative TV show to discuss a pending investigation ... least of all of a sitting prime minister.

Such is the latest sub-basement level to which the Israeli police service has fallen in its policy of ‘trial by 1000 leaks’.

Last week police chief Alsheich reportedly claimed that “powerful figures” had hired private investigators to collect information on the police investigators in the Netanyahu cases, apparently to personally discredit them should they recommend indictments.

How absurd is this? 

An aggrieved person might go on TV in order to plead a case for the police to investigate. But since when does a police chief have to do this? He is the chief of police! If there are dark forces or criminal elements following his people around, let him follow them and investigate them – or put them in the cooler.

This appears to me to have been a totally politicised event to smear PM Netanyahu just as the police recommend his indictment to the attorney general.

To imply that Netanyahu is running some Black Ops team to shake off these petty charges over cigars and other gifts from friends is absurd.

Did it occur to the police chief that there are some “powerful figures” who actually support Netanyahu – just like the “powerful figures” in the Israeli media and politics who are so consumed with jealousy that they can’t sleep at night with the thought that Netanyahu is still in office for the longest term since Ben Gurion.

We are talking about a prime minister who has steered the Jewish state through eight years of Obama !

And he has brought us out the other end whole: with an economy that makes a mockery of the EU, newfound alliances and unprecedented trade relations with Africa and India and – most important of all - with not an inch of our precious homeland given up. About the only thing Bibi did for Obama was to apologise to Turkey’s prime minister Erdogan, and that was only because O thrust his phone into Bibi’s hand at the airport.

Whatever his weaknesses may be - for rich friends, cigars or pistachio ice cream bought on the official residence’s tab - the bigger picture is that he works day and night for the security of the State of Israel facing down Iran’s genocidal threats and Europe’s trade boycotts from abroad whilst having to watch his back at home against the knives of political assassination within his wafer-thin coalition. 

Could you do that job?

So, Mr Police Commissioner – stop being a cry-baby on TV and tell your officers to stop their incessant leaking.