Last update - 00:00 28/05/2007
Interior Minister says media pressure distorted Winograd findings
By Yuval Yoaz, Haaretz Correspondent
Interior Minister Roni Bar-On said on Monday that the findings of the Winograd war probe commission were distorted by media pressure aimed at satisfying public opinion.
The Winograd Commission harshly criticized key decision makers in the political and military echelons for their conduct during the Second Lebanon War in the panel's interim report released a month ago.
At a meeting of the Israel Bar Association (ISBA) in Eilat, Bar-On said "the Winograd report is a document that was served up to the Moloch of public opinion, following media pressure directly on the commission members."
Bar-On severely criticized the report, claiming that "the Winograd report is an incoherent report."
The minister also criticized the report's implications. "I sit in the security cabinet now that there are deliberations over Gaza, and I'm telling you, the security cabinet is now speaking 'Winogradian.' Everyone speaks for an hour so that he can tell the probe committee that 'I voted for, but was actually against,'" he said referring to testimonies of officials before the investigation commission, who said that they had been against going to war but didn't vote against it.
According to Bar-On, "the fundamental flaw regarding the report stems from the attempt to find its legal dimension, and view the committee members as actual judges. I am a witness to the grave phenomenon of procedures being documented in the context of 'a future defense [against an indictment],' and hear things being said for the sake of the protocol."
"The Israeli public has formed a powerful yearning for a specific scapegoat to blame for all that goes wrong in public life. It seems to me that we have returned to the Middle Ages, to a place where the city square was the central stage, and the show trial was the main event. Although the suitable sphere is the public sphere and not the defendants' bench in the courthouse, there is still mounting public pressure for someone to take personal responsibility and, if possible, criminal responsibility. Only the judicial system can satisfy the primeval urge to see heads roll."
"The easiest solution is replacing the prime minister. It will allow us to evade the questions that the committee poses to a generation of leaders. Replacing the prime minister now, or going to early elections, is a negative message to future governments, and will deter leaders from making difficult decisions," Bar-on concluded.