Why Peres was defeated: the betrayal of the public trust

Over a period of six months, our news agency hired a leading financial investigations firm to monitor the financial dealings of the Peres Center for Peace, while delivering the documentation of these findings to every key member of the Knesset concerning the financial discrepancies of the Peres Center.

These financial investigators examined the accessible public records of the Peres Center that were provided by the registrar of non-profit organizations of the Israel Ministry of Interior.

What the record showed was that the center that Peres had personally organized was delinquent in every aspect of what can be called the “public trust”.

The Peres Center refused to disclose its foreign contributors, as required by law.

The Peres Center refused to disclose its senior staffers who received exorbitant salaries, as required by law.

The Peres Center did not pay the appropriate taxes that an organization in the political realm is supposed to pay, as required by law.

The Peres Center remunerated the law firm of one of its founding members, Yitzhak Hertzog, in the amount of more than $250,000, in violation of the law.

The Peres Center would not provide the government with an explanation as to what it did with more than $2,000,000 that disappeared from the coffers of the center.

Meanwhile, the Peres Center initiatiated a $60 Million investment fund to transfer money to a corrupt PLO agency, Pal-Tel communications, a company owned in part by Osama Bin Ladin.

The Peres Center would not disclose where it got the funds for such an investment and whether it knew of the involvement of Bin Laden in such a venture.

Although the popular investigative journalist of Maariv, Yoav Yitzhak, had last year written three articles in the Fall of 1999 that was based on this research concerning these financial discrepancies of the Peres Center, the press in the Spring and summer of 2000 turned a deaf ear to our findings.

To begin with, Maariv, whose publisher had meanwhile been jailed, was less than enthusiastic to allow Yoav Yitzhak to further explore these issues.

The editor of Maariv, indeed, had meanwhile been appointed to be an advisor to Israel Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

However, the reporters for all of these media outlets met with our news agency and demonstrated great enthusiasm for this story, until the editors vetoed their reporters.

Besides Maariv, the story was self-censored by the editors of Yediot Aharonot, the “Mishal Ham” investigation show of Israel TV, HaAretz, Makor Rishon, Yom HaShishi and IBA Israel news radio.

There was a breakthrough on July 13, when the leading Israeli economics paper, Globes, reported two articles based on the Peres Center which appeared on page 2 – The first, concerning the accusation of the registrar of Non-Profit organizations which stated that the Peres Center would not provide for an accounting of more than $2,000,000.

The other article concerning the fact that the Peres Center was providing 73% of its budget for exorbitant administrative costs.

However, no other media outlet picked up on the story.

The reporters from the various media outlets all reported that their editors were under pressure not to report the story.

Self-censorship of the media concerning Peres hit new heights when the Jerusalem Post canceled its July 28th investigative story that was based on our documentation, after which we encouraged a “citizens for clean government” organization to sponsor an ad on the front page of the July 28th edition of the Jerusalem Post which would state some of the financial discrepancies of the Peres Center so that the people should know about before they voted.

HaAretz, which had also self-censored an article on these findings, refused to run the same ad in Hebrew.

However, integrity won the day.

At least six MK’s say that they used this investigative material played a key roles in their decision to vote for Moshe Katzav, and, most significantly, against Shimon Peres.

Epilogue:

This is not the first time that the integrity of Shimon Peres as a candidate for public office has been called into question.

On April 23, 1996, Peres, then a candidate for re-election as Prime Minister of Israel, declared that the PLO would cancel its covenant that calls for Israel’s destruction in a special meeting of the PNC that was to be convened the next day.

Only one TV crew covered the PNC’s special session.

Since it was held on Israel Independence Day, the Israeli media was “off”.

After the session, Peres declared that the PLO had indeed canceled its covenant, and this was the most important day in Zionist history. Clinton chimed in with coordinated praise of the PLO and the Oslo process.

Except that the tape of the session was shown repeatedly before the May 29, 1996 election.

A picture is worth a thousand words: The PLO had decided to create a committee, not to cancel its covenant. Peres and Clinton were lying.

In 1996 and in the year 2000, Peres was exposed in a betrayal of the public trust. It was that betrayal of the public trust that denied him election as the prime minister and the president of Israel.