Israeli 'New Politics' Unwilling To Deal With Corruption
Labor Knesset member Moshe Mizrahi was surprised by the lack of support in the Knesset for the lobby he is heading against public corruption.
At the beginning of his term as a member of the Knesset (MK) for Labor, Moshe Mizrahi was sure that he could easily recruit most of his fellow MKs to the Parliamentary Lobby for the Struggle against Corruption in the Public Sector, which he chairs. After all, Israel is in the era of "new politics." When Mizrahi approached other legislators, he discovered that most fled from his invitation as if from a fire. It is not surprising behavior from MKs of the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, whose chairman, Aryeh Deri, has been convicted of criminal activity and who Mizrahi asserts should not be allowed to serve as an elected official. It is also not surprising when it comes to members of the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu, who are beholden to their party chairman, former Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, who was the target of investigation and wiretapping by the National Police Unit for International Investigations when Mizrahi was its head. But what about the Knesset members from Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid and from Naftali Bennett’s HaBayit HaYehudi?
After much pleading and great effort, Mizrahi succeeded in signing up 24 MPs — only one-fifth of representatives elected to the chamber. It seems that the 19th Knesset is in no rush to raise the flag of the fight against corruption.
Mizrahi, 62, is a retired police commander. In the 1990s he led major investigations into prominent politicians and now regularly sees two of them — Deri and Liberman — at his new workplace, the Knesset. On the eve of the last election, Mizrahi joined the Labor Party, and since then he has been associated with Shelly Yachimovich, chair of the party, and supports her battle against MK Isaac Herzog for Labor's chairmanship.
