The investigation this week by Britain's The Guardian newspaper revealed an alleged extortion operation led by then-Mossad head Yossi Cohen against then-International Criminal Court prosecutor Fatou Bensouda. About two years ago, Haaretz was about to reveal the affair, but an Israeli security official blocked publication. Now the affair has been exposed at a difficult time for Israel.
The timing couldn't be worse. It is occurring in the midst of a political tsunami and a week after Karim Khan, the ICC prosecutor who replaced Bensouda, sought arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
One of the investigation's key findings would have been known to readers of Haaretz a long time ago if Israel was the democratic state it claims to be.
The first part of the two-part exposé published by the British newspaper, which was conducted in cooperation with journalists from the Israeli-Palestinian investigative sites +972 Magazine and Local Call, focuses on an operation led by Cohen to disrupt an earlier investigation against Israel at the ICC in The Hague, while attempting to threaten and intimidate its former prosecutor, Bensouda.
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Public Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda at the International Criminal Court in the Hague, August 28, 2017. Credit: Bas Czerwinski/Pool via REUTERS
The second part of the exposé provides evidence of an operation to hack and digitally intercept correspondence between Palestinians who were passing information to the court and its staff. This operation was led, according to the investigation, by the Shin Bet and Military Intelligence.
Israel officially denies the claims. The Prime Minister's Office told The Guardian that the allegations were "false and unfounded" and "meant to hurt the State of Israel." However, Israeli officials not only confirmed the main finding in the first part of the investigation, which was learned by Haaretz back in 2022, but also that Israeli government officials had used emergency powers to prevent the story from being published at the time.
According to the Guardian report, Cohen, as head of the Mossad, personally contacted Bensouda several times between 2017 and 2020, and relayed threatening messages to her if she moved ahead with an investigation against Israel. It also reported that Israel used the transcripts of tapes in which Bensouda's husband, Philip, was engaged in some embarrassing conversations, in order to influence her and disrupt the proceedings.
It is possible that this part of the exposé relates to tapes held by the Israeli lawyer Mordechai Tzivin, who indeed did keep recordings of conversations with Philip Bensouda, as reported in TheMarker in December.
It was also reported that Joseph Kabila, the former president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was allegedly recruited as an agent for the extortion operation against the prosecutor. Among other things, the investigation said a meeting between Kabila and Bensouda in New York served to create an "ambush" for a surprise meeting between Cohen and Bensouda, in which a threatening message was conveyed.
In May 2022, Haaretz had hoped to publish this exact headline: that Israel acted to extort the prosecutor, through the Mossad, as part of an operation directed and personally lead by Cohen.
During the course of an investigation that lasted several months, Haaretz searched for an answer to the question of what the former head of the Mossad was seeking in three visits to the Congo in 2019, accompanied by billionaire Dan Gertler, who was also involved in the dubious operation, according to sources who spoke with Haaretz. Gertler even made his private plane available to fly Cohen to the African country.
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Israeli billionaire Dan Gertler.Credit: Simon Dawson / Bloomberg
The answer, according to several sources, was this: Gertler and Cohen traveled to meet Kabila as part of an operation whose goal was to recruit or extort the ICC prosecutor as she moved against Israel.
At the beginning of 2022, I attempted to contact the former prosecutor through a third party who knew her. Bensouda never responded to the approach, but days after the attempt, when I wanted to publish the story, my phone rang and on the other end of the line was the voice of a senior security official. "Can you come to see me tomorrow?" he asked.
At the entrance to the senior official's office, I was asked to deposit my mobile phone to prevent me from recording the conversation. In the room, another senior official from a different security agency was waiting for me. The conversation began with the words, "We understand you know about the prosecutor."
It was a polite conversation, a polite threat. The tone was calm, the content much less so. I was explained that if I publish the story, I would suffer the consequences and get to know the interrogation rooms of the Israeli security authorities from the inside. I argued against the use of security powers to prevent the publication of information whose harm is not security-related but rather reputational in nature, but to no avail.
In the end, it was made clear to me that even sharing the information "with my friends abroad," referring to foreign media outlets, would lead to the same results.
In May 2022, Haaretz reported on the highlights of Cohen's Congo trips, including the entanglements of the former Mossad head with the authorities there and the circumstances of his expulsion from the country. The fact that the trips were part of an operation to extort or recruit the prosecutor and disrupt the proceedings in The Hague was omitted.
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ICC prosecutor Karim Khan, last month.Credit: Leonardo Fernandez Viloria/Reuters
Two years later, the government's gagging effort has turned out to be a dual folly. Instead of being exposed in an Israeli newspaper, the investigation has now appeared in a newspaper with global circulation. Instead of contending with the story during peacetime, it must now deal with it in the midst of the war.
The timing, it appears, couldn't be worse, occurring in the midst of a political tsunami and a week after current ICC prosecutor Khan, who succeeded Bensouda, is seeking another order against Netanyahu and Gallant on charges they violated the laws of war in Gaza. All that Israel needs is for the prosecutor to add offenses against the administration of justice to his list of allegations. This may very well happen.
On behalf of Gertler, it was stated: "What is stated in your request is not true. The report cited is part of a campaign of persecution that you have been conducting for years against Mr. Gertler, for which lawsuits have been filed. Mr. Gertler reserves the right to file another lawsuit in this matter."
Disclosure: Gertler is suing Haaretz for defamation.