Every day, the sad reality of the majority of countries lays bare the promiscuous ties between agents of the executive, legislative, judicial, economic, media powers and others. Such powers, which in the light of the law ought to be separate, are usually interconnected in a permanent game of traffic of favors. Added to this immense corruption are the customary cravings for money, protagonism or power, actively displayed by a large number of failed politicians who seek exactly the same protagonism.  

In this heinous, in no way exaggerated picture, rather the contrary, it is curious to see how, every day, political newspapers get their thrills from posting a photograph of Benjamin Netanyahu linked to that very word corruption. There is a huge desire to bring him speedily to justice for the “crimes he committed”. There is so much negative propaganda that the common citizen is led to believe that corrupters spent millions of dollars stealing from the Israeli public treasury.

Boxes of cigars and bottles of champagne gifted by Netanyahu’s rich friends are offered up as “evidence of the crime” against him, as well as jewelry for his wife whose total value is less than that needed to pay the rent on a small apartment in Jerusalem. Corruption, cry the above described countries. Simple social conventions, would be the reply of all the civilizations known to man.

Likewise, a review of the considerations for the cigars, champagne and baubles, would be just as incredible. A contact made to United States authorities regarding a friend’s visa. An official of the Ministry of Communications urged to supply “technical information” to his friend regarding a possible merger between telecoms companies. A chat with the finance minister as to the “possibility” of extending the period of a tax exemption on investment which, if “possible”, would help a large number of investors, whether or not cronies of Netanyahu.

Netanyahu, regarded the world over as being of the far-right, is also charged with having “tried to favor” another friend, the editor of the leftwing newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, against a rightwing newspaper, Israel Hayom, belonging to another friend. The facts speak for themselves. Any additional comments might merely harm the conclusion that is immediately visible.

Those familiar with the traffic of influences played out in Europe regarding public prosecutors cannot fail to be amazed by what is described below. It was suggested to the prosecutor in charge of a lawsuit against Sara Netanyahu that she might become Prosecutor General of Israel. The result was a formal accusation against the experienced politician for “bribery”. Should these Israeli investigators be conducting investigations in what is known as the West, the chairs seating so many persons in suits and tie in governments and parliaments would be vacant.

In the meantime, suitcases full of cash from Qatar and from other interests linked to Iran and Lebanon have turned up in the European Parliament and even in the official residences of European prime ministers, although this has not splattered their faces in the newspapers much less linked them to corruption. A time of ideological fanaticism, intellectual dishonesty and total corruption, where Israel emerges as a standard in the defense of cultural, religious and civilizational particularity, although it is also subject to the same childish games involving that paralysis-inducing word: corruption.