Marianne Azizi writes:
While the mainstream media are feasting on the daily scandals of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his friends, corruption against ordinary people continues unabated
One year ago a wave of arrests of journalists, bloggers, social media activists and even lawyers rocked Israel. Those affected were dubbed the “Cyber Terrorist Network”, and the three who were charged with over 120 offences were described by some media as worse than the terrorist Islamic State group.
Since then the ulta-subservient media have been silent. One blogger remains in jail, another two are under house arrest after 10 months in prison, still without trial.
Civil and human rights activists have known for decades that the judicial system is corrupt. However, despite all attempts to harass and thwart them, they continue to campaign against the corruption.
The Israeli state has enlisted US agencies to hack into critical bloggers’ computers and phones. Some of the 50,000 pages and hundreds of computer disks of evidence have been denied to defence lawyers. But what has been pieced together is remarkable.
First, we need to go back a couple of years to the Panama Papers leak and the Mexican spying scandal. In both of these cases it was revealed that Israel’s NSO Group had sold its espionage software, Pegasus, to purchases who used it to spy on journalists and human rights activists. Hundreds of Israelis were listed in the Panama Papers.
This spying software has been sold to dozens of countries with dubious human rights records. The NSO Group claims it has no knowledge of how its product is used once it is sold. It is not uncommon for such cyber products to be sold to shady governments which used it for dubious purposes under the pretext of preventing terrorism.
But “the only democracy in the Middle East” has been using such software to spy on its own human rights bloggers as far back as 2015. Every phone call, email and conversation is in the evidence.
The assistance of the US Homeland Security and FBI, as well as Interpol, has been sought under the pretext of counterterrorism. It is also likely that the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) has been abused by making inferences to terrorism in order to obtain information from Google and WordPress.
Israeli anti-corruption activists are still being infiltrated to this day, with one secret agent coming forward and speaking out a rally last week. It is indeed business as usual. Recently, another lawyer was questioned for nine hours and told he was suspected of working with outside networks to leak information to foreign quarters about judicial corruption with the aim of “smearing the reputation of Israel”.
On 26 February judge Ronit Ponansky turned out to be at the centre of a scandal, and this was used by Netanyahu to infer that the investigations against him are tainted. This same judge was on duty when an order was signed to use cyber espionage tools against blogger Lory Shem Tov.
Following the leak of a WhatsApp conversation between Poznanski and a prosecutor, Ponansky was replaced by Ala Maswara. This is the same judge who was in the initial investigation of the bloggers and was also found by the ombudsman to have signed flawed search warrants against them. Poznanski’s behaviour was not regarded as particularly unusual. Corruption has become the norm in Israel.
Members of the elite in Israel are making headlines, and avoiding indictment. But ordinary citizens are being persecuted and paying the price. All investigations into activists hone in on whether they are collaborating with, or know Palestinian groups. The corruption inside the country – in banks, the tax authority, ministries and businesses – does not seem to be sufficient for investigators to understand that the country could implode without any help from anyone outside.
The corruption permeating Israel is finally surfacing for all to see. Netanyahu is only the political front for the mafia and the dubious businesses running Israel
Uprooted Palestinian 
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