A legal battle from the movies
No modern playwright can conjure up a script like this, and no criminal prosecutor, throughout the arduous battle against former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his former bureau chief Shula Zaken, dared dreamed of a day such as this. Indeed, a day in which he, the father figure, the tribal chief, would be forced to sit in the investigation room with detectives, who hold in their possession tape recordings of his shady conversations with his trusted secretary, "my Shula," as he used to call her.
Sitting in that room, pale and perhaps a little sweaty, he would be recounting not only the long path since becoming prime minister but also a far more embarrassing moment from almost seven years ago. Yaakov Borovsky and Rina Kramf were sent by then-State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss to investigate Olmert's conduct surrounding the investment center. Shula Zaken requested that they not come with tape recorders. It would unbecoming if journalists were to videotape the meeting she said. She would provide the recording.
She made two, and during the conversation Olmert chided and reproached them, and two days after they returned to their offices Zaken phoned Borovsky and told him the tape recorders didn't work. Luckily they took notes. Embarrassing indeed. So how do the tapes compare to Olmert's latest account to police? The same Olmert and the same Shula, but somehow two different people.
Is it reminiscent of what Jephthah the Gileadite did to his daughter, or of two of King Lear's daughters, who turned their backs to him? So, when she tape-recorded him, he never imagined she would do something like this to him. Yes, she never imagined that upon leaving the witness stand he would not so much as look in her direction; that he would pass by her like she didn't exist.
Olmert's lawyer Roi Blecher called her a "liar." She undoubtedly lied a lot -- for him, and then for herself. But on that occasion, when he passed by her in that Jerusalem courtroom, she told him the most bitter of truths: Everything that is mine -- is yours; and everything I have done -- I have learned from you, and did for you.
The most recent testimony shows that his two legal battles are intertwined. Zaken is the junction where the facts and proof meet between them. No one but her can do this, and likely provide additional instances of corruption. Not only were Moshe Talanksy and Shmuel Dechner at one end of the junction providing money to Yossi Olmert -- the problematic brother -- it is clear that the former prime minister had two avenues from which to extract and use money: On one avenue he funneled dirty money to the person he owed or wanted to help (Dechner's money to Yossi and his secretary Shula); and the other avenue that led directly to him (Talansky's and the Rishon Tours' money). He also didn't know how to stop. All the streams lead to the sea, and the sea is never full.
From a legal-money tracking perspective and for the sake of providing proof this is what matters. From a human perspective, this round of Olmert's and Zaken's testimony is actually more important. It not only pertains to the dirty bribe money but to the fragility of the human condition in trying times. We can assume that upon leaving the police department he uttered something along the lines of the Prophet Isaiah's words: "Your children hasten back, and those who laid you waste depart from you" (Isaiah 49:17).
טעינו? נתקן! אם מצאתם טעות בכתבה, נשמח שתשתפו אותנו