David Horovitz
Journalist & Author

Is it possible that the president could, logistically speaking, have carried on in the alleged manner while, in the offices all around him, the presidential staff went about their work in blithe ignorance? Almost inconceivable, runs the answer

However it ends, no good will come of it.

If it turns out that President Katsav is a sexual predator and a liar, our already shaky faith in the probity of our leaders, and by extension in the institutions of our democracy that they staff, will be weakened still further.

If, ultimately, his actions prove to have been entirely proper, and his involvement in this bitter scandal is a consequence of malevolence, then given the heavy- handed, intolerably leak-paved and protracted police handling of the probe, heaven help any other public figure subjected to the investigative attentions of the men and women in blue. And where would such exculpation leave the police in the public’s perception?

Even some of the people who have worked closest to Katsav and like to think that they know him best are uncertain. One such individual is adamant that the allegations are simply impossible to reconcile with the president they respect and admire. The claims just cannot be true. Another noted, sadly, that the very fact that, during hours upon hours of police questioning, Katsav was unable to satisfactorily refute and dispel the suspicions against him is dismaying, to put it mildly.

Some in Beit Hanassi, it is understood, have directly asked the president if there is any truth to the appalling matter. And he has insisted, looking them squarely in the eye, that, no, the allegations are baseless. If he is lying, some are now asking themselves, then who, in future, can one dare to let oneself trust? And if he is telling the truth, how can we tolerate a system that allows an honest man to be dragged through this living hell?

Is it possible that the president could, logistically speaking, have carried on in the alleged manner while, in the offices all around him, the presidential staff went about their work in blithe ignorance? Almost impossible to believe, runs the answer. Almost inconceivable.

The assumption, and it is one that has strengthened the longer and wider the investigation has ranged, is that the police will recommend that the president be charged. And a scarcely less widely held assumption, even in these circles close to Katsav, is that Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz, who has already publicly poured cold water on the president’s talk of there being a plot against him, will be disinclined to close the file. Katsav would then have to suspend himself or resign; either way, thus, in scandal, would end a presidency that had thrived and won appreciation for most of its term precisely on reassuring solidity, on the absence of drama and controversy.

Such conventional legal wisdom can be misplaced, of course. Take the “Greek Island” affair that swirled around then prime minister Ariel Sharon, and the purported compelling evidence, in the conventional wisdom that pertained a little over two years ago, that Mazuz would press charges. Calmly rejecting the recommendations not just of the police but of his own State Prosecutor’s Office, Mazuz managed to deem that evidence thoroughly non- compelling and closed the affair with the contention that the findings against Sharon didn’t even come close to offering a reasonable probability of a conviction.

Eyebrows are raised knowingly when this potential precedent is raised. That was different, say some who profess to be in the know, steadfastly refusing elaboration and, in so doing, reinforcing the nauseating concern of something deeply awry in yet another hierarchy that ought to be beyond reproach.

At the close of this shameful year, in the nationally troubling matter of the president, some have much to atone for. They know who they are. There can be no happy conclusion. But is it too much to ask that it be quick and definitive? Probably.

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