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January 22, 1999/5 Shevat 5759, Vol. 51, No. 17
Latest political scandal fuels divisiveness in Israeli society
DAVID LANDAU
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - An obscure drug trial that took place 17 years ago has become the focus of a public storm that is sweeping Israel with a peculiar ferocity.
Few Israelis had heard of Yechiem Ohana, a Tiberias businessman who was jailed for 30 months in the early 1980s for trafficking in drugs, and who has proclaimed his innocence ever since. The issues in the case, first published last week by the Israeli daily Ma'ariv, are intricate and complex, and few people claim to fully understand them. But this has not stopped anyone from taking sides.
Suddenly the country is divided between those who sympathize with Ohana's demands for a retrial, and those who repeat the police assertion that the man is a scoundrel, a forger and a fraud.
Although the case may appear to be the latest scandal enveloping Israel, the heated debate surrounding it reflects the fault lines that divide Israel politically. Surfacing as Israel prepares for critical elections in May, the Ohana affair has exposed a fractured society whose deep divisions must worry all who care about the fundamental strength and cohesion of the Jewish state. Those on the political left see Ohana's case as the tip of a huge conspiracy designed to compromise the Israeli justice system and undermine the rule of law. Those on the right see this interpretation as pure paranoia on the part of a beleaguered elite who are fearful of the rise to power of the Sephardim, immigrants and the Orthodox.
Ohana, a member of a well-known and politically powerful family, claims he was framed for trafficking drugs by a group of senior police officials who were conspiring to weaken the then-national police superintendent, Herzl Shafir, by blocking his appointment of a close ally to a top position in the northern police command. The ally was a friend of Ohana. To have Ohana convicted of selling drugs would hurt the ally, and deny him the post.
Ohana claims, moreover, that the judge trying his case was blackmailed by the police officials over an illicit affair the judge had had with a minor.
The judge, Theodore Orr, is now a member of the Supreme Court. If he were compromised by Ohana's allegations, the credibility of the entire system could be dealt a massive blow.
After allowing his name to be disclosed in connection with the case, Orr denied the accusations, adding that the materials submitted by Ohana in his request for a retrial, including documents Orr allegedly wrote, are forgeries.
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