Israeli Attorney General Meni Mazuz and Israel State Attorney Moshe Lador made their decision final yesterday morning to indict the disgraced outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in the “Talansky affair” or the “cash envelopes affair.”

This refers to Moshe Talansky, an American businessman who has acted as a mediator between American and Israeli interests for many years. According to records carefully kept by Mr. Olmert’s assistant, Mr. Talansky brought as much as $600,000 in cash envelopes to Mr. Olmert as incentives to advance the private business interests of foreign citizens, mostly from the United States.

These envelopes were delivered to Mr. Olmert while he was Mayor of Jerusalem, Minister of Trade and Industry and as Minister of Finance.

This is Mr. Olmert’s second indictment count, following on the heels of the decision to indict him in the “Rishon Tours” affair, where Mr. Olmert was found to have charged several American philanthropic organizations for the same flight, with Mr. Olmert pocketing the difference in terms of frequent flier points for his family.

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Israeli law professor Emmanuel Gross explained the situation of Israel’s prime minister to the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv:

“If a public official receives funds from private individuals, without a reasonable explanation, this places the recipient in a clear situation of ‘a conflict of interests’ and an ‘offense of fraud and breach of trust.’”

At the same time, the indictment of an Israeli official because of questionable financial connections with American philanthropists and American businesspeople will undoubtedly have a long-term effect on the future relationships between American organizations and Israeli government officials.

David Bedein can be reached at dbedein@israelbehindthenews.com

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David Bedein
David Bedein
David Bedein is an MSW community organizer and an investigative journalist.   In 1987, Bedein established the Israel Resource News Agency at Beit Agron to accompany foreign journalists in their coverage of Israel, to balance the media lobbies established by the PLO and their allies.   Mr. Bedein has reported for news outlets such as CNN Radio, Makor Rishon, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, BBC and The Jerusalem Post, For four years, Mr. Bedein acted as the Middle East correspondent for The Philadelphia Bulletin, writing 1,062 articles until the newspaper ceased operation in 2010. Bedein has covered breaking Middle East negotiations in Oslo, Ottawa, Shepherdstown, The Wye Plantation, Annapolis, Geneva, Nicosia, Washington, D.C., London, Bonn, and Vienna. Bedein has overseen investigative studies of the Palestinian Authority, the Expulsion Process from Gush Katif and Samaria, The Peres Center for Peace, Peace Now, The International Center for Economic Cooperation of Yossi Beilin, the ISM, Adalah, and the New Israel Fund.   Since 2005, Bedein has also served as Director of the Center for Near East Policy Research.   A focus of the center's investigations is The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). In that context, Bedein authored Roadblock to Peace: How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict - UNRWA Policies Reconsidered, which caps Bedein's 28 years of investigations of UNRWA. The Center for Near East Policy Research has been instrumental in reaching elected officials, decision makers and journalists, commissioning studies, reports, news stories and films. In 2009, the center began decided to produce short movies, in addition to monographs, to film every aspect of UNRWA education in a clear and cogent fashion.   The center has so far produced seven short documentary pieces n UNRWA which have received international acclaim and recognition, showing how which UNRWA promotes anti-Semitism and incitement to violence in their education'   In sum, Bedein has pioneered The UNRWA Reform Initiative, a strategy which calls for donor nations to insist on reasonable reforms of UNRWA. Bedein and his team of experts provide timely briefings to members to legislative bodies world wide, bringing the results of his investigations to donor nations, while demanding reforms based on transparency, refugee resettlement and the demand that terrorists be removed from the UNRWA schools and UNRWA payroll.   Bedein's work can be found at: www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com and www.cfnepr.com. A new site,unrwa-monitor.com, will be launched very soon.

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