Five days of work in one-month vacation? State pays airfare

The Courts Administration is paying the airfare for its director, Judge Moshe Gal, even though only five days of his month-long trip will be spent at a professional conference, Haaretz has learned.

Gal, a candidate for attorney general, left on Sunday night for Hong Kong. He will spend several days there on vacation, at his own expense, before continuing to Sydney, Australia, to attend a conference of the International Organization for Judicial Training. After the conference, Gal will stay in Australia for three weeks on a private vacation. The cost of the three flights - Israel to Hong Kong, Hong Kong to Sydney and Sydney to Israel - is estimated at $2,000.

The Courts Administration will also be paying the travel expenses of three other judges attending the conference: Deputy Supreme Court President Eliezer Rivlin, Supreme Court Justice Asher Grunis and Jerusalem District Court Judge Zvi Zylbertal.

The total sum the administration has allocated for the journey runs to tens of thousands of shekels. Justices Rivlin and Grunis will travel to Australia in business class, for an estimated $5,000 a ticket. Judges Gal and Zylbertal will travel in economy class.

All four judges will be staying at the Sydney Hilton hotel, where the conference will take place. According to the Courts Administration, the rooms booked by the Israeli embassy cost $150 per night. But according to the conference Web site, the special price for conference guests is 300 Australian dollars per night (about $278).

Of the four Israeli delegates, only Rivlin will be chairing a panel and lecturing at the conference. The others will be ordinary participants.

Aside from the four delegates sponsored by the Courts Administration, four other Israeli jurists are traveling to the conference at the IOJT's expense. They are former Supreme Court justice Shlomo Levin, who founded the IOJT; retired judge Amnon Carmi, the organization's secretary-general; Carmi's deputy, Jerusalem District Court Judge Yigal Mersel; and Edna Azrieli, the organization's administrative director, who also serves as an aide to Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch.

A source in the Courts Administration criticized Gal yesterday for choosing to fly at the taxpayer's expense even though he will be on a private holiday most of the time. The source also expressed surprise that Gal was taking such an extended leave so soon after the courts' long summer recess finally ended.

"The Courts Administration is expected to conduct itself differently than politicians do," he said. "It's inconceivable that the administration would spend thousands of dollars on business-class travel for judges, and that the judges would be absent for days in the midst of the work year, as if the court system's backlog had just disappeared ... What happened to setting a personal example?"

The Courts Administration responded that the conference, hosted by the National Judicial College of Australia, will be dealing with a variety of issues relevant to judicial training. Gal, the administration said, is paying for all his vacation expenses, and is expected to remain in contact with his office throughout his absence. The timing of the trip was determined by the timing of the conference, it continued, and "the flight to Sydney has a stopover in Hong Kong in any case."

As for the judges' work load, "the conference was planned far in advance, so no sessions or hearings were scheduled for the Israeli delegates during that time."