Sex scandal shakes Israelis' trust of judicial system

It all started with an old mobile phone. This much-too-smart phone set off one of the juiciest scandals to hit Israel in modern times, threatening to tarnish the image of Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, whose meteoric political rise has generated speculation of a future run for the premiership. The phone belongs to attorney Effi Naveh, the all-powerful chair of the Israel Bar Association (IBA). Until his resignation this week, Naveh was a strategic ally of the justice minister’s. He was the one who helped her lead the dramatic double reform of changing the judicial appointments’ process and appointing to the bench many conservative judges (out of the hundreds appointed during her term as minister).

All this has now collapsed into a deep black hole, with Naveh suspected of pushing through a judge’s appointment in return for sexual favors, turning the IBA into a byzantine harem and contaminating Israel’s sacrosanct judicial appointments system.

As his ally and good friend, Shaked has turned into an obvious target. She is being accused of allowing these improprieties on her watch, ignoring Naveh’s conduct, backing him and failing to see the writing on the wall even when Naveh was caught trying to smuggle his girlfriend in and out of the country by evading passport control at Ben-Gurion Airport.

A Judicial Appointments Committee chaired by the justice minister selects Israeli judges.The panel’s nine members include two lawmakers, two government ministers (one of them the justice minister), three Supreme Court justices and two IBA representatives. A majority of seven is required for candidate approval. In the past (until Shaked was appointed minister), a regular coalition of the three judges and two IBA lawyers voted en bloc, providing the country’s top court with the final say on the country’s judges.