2025-06-18
Dear family and friends,
From London, Oded sent a notice to the Zernik cousins in Israel, echoing Mr. Uri Zernik from California - "Hope y'all are holding tight."
Well, well, well... with a genocide in Gaza and a war with Iran, not only is the Zernik family holding tight, we are holding tight... with distinction in criminality!
A criminal complaint alleging fraud upon the court was registered by the Israel Police
On June 5, I spent some time with the Israel Police, Fraud Division, filing a criminal complaint against Messrs. Dror Zernik and Uri Zernik, their counsel, Attorney Rachel Ben-Ari (a former member of the Judicial Selection Committee), Attorney Yoav Salomon, Judge Hila Gurevitz, and others.
It's not easy, and not your daily routine for police to enter criminal complaints against judges. Moreover, given that there are two judges among the named suspects, the police are not permitted to investigate the case without specific authorization from the Attorney General, Gali Baharav-Miara. Therefore, the complaint and the police certificate were forwarded on the same day for review and authorization by the Attorney General.
Normally, I would give it a very low chance of authorization. For example, consider the interesting situation with the State Attorney's office regarding the criminal complaint stemming from the previous chapter in the Zernik affair, featuring Judge Esperanza Alon. Details are provided below.
Shockwaves through the system
As it turned out, it was the perfect time for filing the complaint.
Under the corrupt impunity policy, criminal complaints against judges have rarely been investigated, regardless of how blatant their alleged criminality was. But last week, in a notable exception, it was reported that Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara authorized an undercover criminal investigation of a judge. The headline above says it generated shockwaves in the justice system...
Continuity with the previous chapter, which ended in 2013, led by Judge Esperanza Alon
The complaint alleges that the current chapter is the direct continuation of the previous chapter, under the leadership of Judge Esperanza Alon (see below). I had previously claimed the same in a paper filed in court. In a response filed on behalf of Mr. Dror Zernik by Attorney Rachel Ben-Ari, he claimed that such an allegation was a "delusional conspiracy theory." Judge Hila Gurevitz quoted Mr. Dror Zernik on this point, but she did not deny it herself...The evidence filed with the police demonstrates that Mr. Dror Zernik was either entirely unaware of the facts or deliberately misrepresented them to the court.
The late Robert Zernik is credited with aligning the Zernik family and the enterprise
The late Robert Zernik is credited with forming the initial connection between the Zernik family and the enterprise.
The affair was bequeathed to Messrs. Uri Zernik and Dror Zernik by their father, Robert Zernik. The brothers' partnership has proven to be effective, with Mr. Uri Zernik lending his name to the venture as the first name partner, and Mr. Dror Zernik bringing his commitment and dedication to the table, allowing the case to flourish. It now involves a group of judges, senior personnel of the Office of the Clerk, as well as Attorney Rachel "90 years of legal excellence" Ben-Ari and Attorney Yoav "straight as a ruler, no feule stück" Salomon, senior personnel in Israeli State Attorney office, Counsel for the Administration of Courts, and others...
The nearly 500-page criminal complaint, filed on June 5, alleges that the affair exhibits the "hallmarks of organized crime."
Using here U.S. RICO [Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act] terms to put things into perspective, the Zernik family affair illustrates:
1. Enterprise: There is a structured organization that continuously exists as a front, separate from the criminal activity, i.e., the Haifa Family Court.
2. Pattern of Racketeering Activity - U.S. RICO requires at least two predicate acts within a 10-year period. Listed among the racketeering predicate acts per RICO are obstruction of justice, extortion, and mail and wire fraud. If we count each fake court record issued by Judge Hila Gurevitz as a predicate act, or each fake record filed by Messrs. Uri Zernik and Dror Zernik in collusion with their attorneys, Rachel Ben-Ari and Yoav Salomon, the Zernik family affair alone would suffice to satisfy this requirement. The pattern requires relatedness and continuity of the acts, which can be easily proven here. The related acts have continued for15 years by now.
3. Connection Between each of the Defendant and the Enterprise - considering each of the named suspects individually, i.e., Judge Hila Gurevitz, Attorney Rachel Ben-Ari, Attorney Yoav Salomon, Mr. Uri Zernik, or Mr. Dror Zernik, this element would be easily proven, since all of them routinely participate in the conduct of the enterprise’s business through the alleged pattern of racketeering activity. The defendant must have committed at least two predicate acts of racketeering (called “racketeering activity”) within a 10-year period. For each of the above-referenced suspects, this element would be easily proven.
In the complaint, I claim that there has never been a case of court corruption in Israel's history as meticulously documented as the one at hand
From an uneventful, sheltered Haifa childhood to distinction in criminality as senior citizens
Image | 2 Kidron Street, Haifa
The three brothers grew up on Mount Carmel, Haifa, in a sheltered, somewhat privileged environment of no special distinction. There is nothing about their upbringing that could have led one to predict that at age 70 +/-, they would be engaged in an affair, allegedly distinguished in its criminality.
However, it appears that Messrs. Uri and Dror Zernik are following in their father's footsteps. He, too, in his old age, finally came to terms with the criminal side of his personality. He devoted the last 6 years of his life to engineering the court fraud. Although the affair has now grown considerably, and it appears that the Zernik family name would be permanently etched in the annals of court corruption in Israel.
Image | The Zernik family "not signed yet" protocol - one of a kind creation by Judge Esperanza Alon.The Zernik family has already generated some unique pieces, for example, the Zernik family "not signed yet" protocol. It is thoroughly corrupted - names of the litigants, their ID numbers, their party designations, the names of those present, the content of the purported hearing... and it shows an electronic watermark "not signed yet". It was produced on April 4, 2013. Over 11 years later (!) the Israeli Administration of Courts found it useful to issue another fake record, purporting to be a September 4, 2024, complaint review, stating that the "not signed yet" watermark was not a "structured" feature of Net-HaMishpat case management system, and that they could not figure out how it was generated...
When it comes to shenanigans or deceit in electronic court records, the Judge Varda Alshech affair (2011-2012) is the norotious landmark. At that time it was considered the worst court corruption affair in this history of the State of Israel. Therefore I often say that the Zernik family affair shows some features of the Judge Varda Alshech affair.
Corruption and hallmarks of organized crime are typical of the Israeli family courts
That is not to say that the Zernik family affair is entirely unique. Court corruption, featuring the hallmarks of organized crime, is typical of the family courts in Israel. For example, in 2016, I exposed an alleged court fraud affair in the Jerusalem Family Court. A divorced woman, mother of a 13-year-old boy, alleged that she had been abused and robbed by a group of 5 family court judges, including Menahem HaCohen, Nili Maimon, Shlomo Elbaz, and others.
At the end, the judges appeared inclined to let the divorced father take the boy permanently out of the country, which she believed, probably with a reason, would have meant that she wouldn't ever see the boy again. In late July 2016, she started a sit-down strike in front of Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked's office, demanding a meeting with the Justice Minister.
After sitting there for four days and four nights, she was granted a brief meeting with the Justice Minister and Director General Amy Palmor. She told me that as soon as she left the meeting, she knew they would come after her. She was not a highly educated woman, but she still executed a clever evasion maneuver regarding the public transportation card. She then went into hiding in a friend's home in the Bat Yam suburb of Tel Aviv.
Sure enough, police started broadcasting notices that she was missing. Eventually, her friend's minor son turned her in.
They took her to a compulsory psychiatric examination at Eitanim hospital, Jerusalem.
I have copies of the medical records. The warrant for her compulsory hospitalization shows:
"In coordination with Attorney Yael Kutick, Ministry of Justice, cell phone <>".
On Friday night, the woman recorded a video from the hospital and posted it on Facebook. She wished Ayelet Shaked Shabbat Shalom: "I asked for a short meeting with you, and you got me hospitalized".
As soon as Shabbat was over, Ayelet Shaked's personal spokesperson issued a denial to the media... Shaked claimed that she had nothing to do with the hospitalization...
Anti-judicial corruption activists noticed the video on Facebook and immediately formed an action group. That is how I learned about the case. They went and visited her, figured out how to get her out of there. The sweet stench of corruption in that affair included the Jerusalem District Psychiatrist and Eitanim psychiatrists...
Image | Jerusalem Family Court Judge Menahem HaCohen and his July 26, 2016 creation.
Once the woman was out of the hospital, we still couldn't figure out from her story what happened in the Jerusalem Family Court. That was where I came in.
I met with her a couple of times to hear her narrative of the case. I then offered to help inspect the court file.
That is obviously my expertise... When I won the Supreme Court appeal against the 3 Jerusalem District Judges in State of Israel v Netanyahu, it was a court file inspection issue... Notable Attorney Avigdor Feldman wrote in his column in Haaretz: "A historical event in our justice system".
So, the woman and I visited together to the Jerusalem Family Court in August 2016. It turned out that she had 22 files in the family court. We then completed the forms for litigant's court file inspection (Regulation 3). However, the Deputy Clerk of the Court, who was serving us, refused to provide even a single decision record from the 22 files. She explained that those were not real court records, but merely "drafts".
Carefully reading Judge Menahem HaCohen's creation in the photo above, one should realize it is a one-of-a-kind record of the Constitutional crisis in Israel already in 2016, and it could also be presented as Exhibit 1 on why judicial reform is a must.
The woman met with the Justice Minister and the Director General of the Ministry of Justice. They probably couldn't figure out precisely what the real story was, just like me. So, they sent a government attorney from the legal aid department to check it out in court. Well, first of all, from the legal perspective, that attorney had no right to appear in that case. But then again, what Judge Menahem HaCohen did is described in idiomatic Hebrew as pissing on the Minister of Justice and the Director General from the springboard! The key facts he noted in that document were deceitful. Separately, the entire document was a deceit in itself, showing the electronic watermark "Draft". It is a vivid demonstration of what impunity breeds. It also demonstrates a lack of professionalism or incompetence on the pat of the Minister and her Director General.
That is what's so awful about the family court corruption in Israel. It is enough that you have a corrupt, vengeful member of the family; he/she would easily find a way to connect to the corrupt, dark side of the court system. The prices appear to be relatively low, and any time real estate is involved, the return on investment is fantastic.
In the case of that woman in Jerusalem, it was the estranged father of her child.
I have two of them -- Messrs. Uri and Dror Zernik, and they, in turn, added Attorney Yoav Salomon and Attorney Rachel Ben-Ari to the affair. Judge Hila Gurevitz, who is the star of the current chapter of the affair, was added at the behest of Judge Esperanza Alon, the boss. I guess Messrs. Uri and Dror Zernik wouldn't even know it, but Judge Hila Gurevitz first appeared in the Zernik affair in early January 2023, a few weeks after my mother z"l passed away on December 15, 2022. That is to say, Judge Hila Gurevitz was on the case, even before the Zernik brothers knew there was a case... That's what I call excellence in the public service.
Anniversaries
Filing the criminal complaint was, by some strange twist of the calendar, the 1st anniversary of the sham lawsuit, filed against me by the two above-named Messrs. on June 5, 2024, and the 15th (!) anniversary of the filing by the two Messrs. in collusion with their father of the initial false and misleading papers in the Haifa court against me on June 5, 2010, launching their father's farewell enterprise... perhaps the most remarkable feat of his lifetime...
Partial lineup of the respectable suspects in the criminal complaints: Judge Esperanza Alon, Attorney Amos Sadika, Judge Hila Gurevitz, Attorney Rachle Ben-Ari, Mr. Dror Zernik, Attorney Yoav Salomon, Mr. Uri Zernik.
Impunity breeds corruption
When I filed the criminal complaint on June 5th, I assumed it had a close to zero chance of being seriously addressed by the Israeli law and justice agencies, since the Israeli justice system has developed an undeclared policy of impunity for judges. In the almost 80-year history of the state, not a single judge has been convicted of corruption charges (e.g., fraud, deceit, breach of trust, bribery, etc), despite corruption, particularly in the family courts, being notorious. It should be noted for the general reader that, among criminologists and human rights NGOs, impunity for officeholders (any officeholders, not necessarily judges) is considered a hallmark of a corrupt law and justice system, and a sure recipe for further growth of corruption.
Obviously, such an impunity, as a policy of law and justice agencies, has no legal foundation; therefore, its implementation often requires unlawful actions by senior law enforcement and justice officers. Therefore, the documentation of the ways law and justice agencies address complaints of judicial corruption are often some of the most important insights gained from filing such complaints.
The Zernik affair is unprecedented: 15 years of meticulously documented process
Among the suspects, beyond the judges, Attorney Rachel Ben-Ari should be considered a "public figure": She advertises her powerhouse Haifa office as "90 years of legal excellence", since for 3 generations her family's law office has been an integral part of the Israeli legal establishment. For years, she served as a member of the Judicial Selection Committee, representing the Israel Bar Association. In her bio, she notes that she headed the Haifa branch of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, serves on the boards of directors of public corporations, chaired the Audit Committee of the Channel 2 News Corp., etc.
Judge Hila Gurevitz was appointed to the bench during Rachel Ben-Ari's tenure on the committee.
In this respect, the Zernik family affair resembles a judicial corruption affair that exploded in 2020: It turned out that Attorney Effi Naveh (who succeeded Ben-Ari on the committee) formed a relationship with Presiding Judge of the Tel-Aviv District Court, Eitan Orenstein (whose promotion to presiding judge Naveh had engineered), in which Naveh was dictating to Orenstein how and when to rule in a large corporate bankruptcy case...
However, whereas in the Naveh-Orenstein affair it was clear that Naveh was the lead player, with Orenstein following, in the case at hand, the evidence indicates it's the other way around...
The earlier chapter began in 2013 and led to a criminal complaint in 2016, which seemingly vanished; the matter is now pending review by the Jerusalem District Court
The earlier chapter of the Zernik family affair started in 2013. It involved Judge Esperanza Alon and Attorney Amos Sadika, the latter appearing as counsel for Robert Zernik and Dror Zernik...
Key characters in the Zernik family affair, 2013 chapter now before the Jerusalem District Court: Judge Esperanza Alon, Attorney Amos Sadika, former State Attorney Shay Nitzan, former Attorney General Avihai Mandelblit, and current Director General of the Ministry of Justice, Itamar Donenfeld.
On June 16, 2025, I filed an Administrative Petition in the Jerusalem District Court, Zernik v Minister of Justice Yariv Levin. In this petition I ask the Court to order the Minister of Justice to provide me with the purported decision record by former State Attorney Shay Nitzan, which my 2016 criminal complaint against Judge Esperanza Alon and others.
That is the nominal request. In fact, Minister of Justice Yariv Levin and his Director General Itamar Donenfeld have been trying to comply with the law and provide me with the decision record. However, the case suggests that the State Attorney's office has a mind of its own and laws of its own. It refused to cooperate with a Freedom of Information Act [FOIA] request that I filed in early January 2025.
The FOIA officer operates under the office of Director General and the Minister of Justice bureau. Normally, FOIA responses are provided within 30 days. Sometimes, a 30-day extension is issued. In this case, the FOIA request lasted for 6 months and a formal response letter has never been issued.
The case provides unique insights into the state of justice in Israel today... the ideological rift between current Minister of Justice Yariv Levin and Director General Itamar Donenfeld on the one hand and the State Attorney's office... It's the exact opposite of what the media reports...
The State Attorney's office and Shay Nitzan, in person, were involved in unlawfully withholding my complaint and a purported decision record by former State Attorney Shay Nitzan, refusing to provide it to the Ministry of Justice FOIA officer.
The FOIA officer wrote to me that my FOIA request was "complex" because the current State Attorney's office refused to cooperate with the Director General's office, which instructed them to comply with the law and provide me a copy of the purported decision on my earlier complaint.
This story is mind-boggling. The State Attorney is the highest officer directly responsible for law enforcement. Here, decisions are made regarding prosecution or closing investigation files in the most complex and controversial cases. They are supposed to be the model of compliance with the law. State Attorney Shay Nitzan has been gone for a couple of years. And yet, the new State Attorney and senior staff of his office are standing firm in shielding Shay Nitzan's alleged criminal conduct. Shay Nitzan's criminality, in turn, was motivated by the need to provide Judge Esperanza Alon with impunity, after I caught her committing various types of computer fraud.
Robert Zernik started his fraud career at over 80, but his legacy may be significant in the annals of court corruption in Israel
And yet, thanks to an insignificant, home-made apparent fraud by Robert Zernik and Messrs Uri and Dror Zernik (in the initial stage, they worked without an attorney), we've got the perfect documentation of corruption and criminality at the highest echelons of the Israeli justice system...
An 83-year-old Robert Zernik, for the first time in his life without Ima z"l watching over him, finally had a chance to act out his somewhat childish, mischievous, criminal fantasies.
I remember visiting him in 2010. He stunned me by asking for my help in his failed attempt to defraud our upstairs elderly neighbors, Kahana. They were our good neighbors for decades. By 2010, they were neighbors for over 40 years. I used to babysit for their daughters when they wanted to go out at night. Ella Kahana was sick; she couldn't go up the stairs. So, the Kahanas asked to build an elevator to allow her to get in and out of the apartment.
Robert Zernik didn't object to the building of the elevator, and obviously, once built it was available to him. However, he refused to participate in funding it. That was fine; it was his right. So Kahana paid for it, and Kahana did a nice professional job on that elevator.
But then, in 2010, Robert Zernik told me he had ordered an "engineering report" to show defects in the elevator, so that Kahana would have to pay for the repairs. However, these were apparently fake defects, so in order to generate the "engineering report," Robert Zernik had to hire a fraudster. In short, he presented Kahana with an "engineering report" that was by a non-engineer... Kahana, who was a sharp fellow, caught it right away.
So there he was, asking me to help him defraud Kahana, while I was asking him repeatedly not to start another fraud against me, because I knew the character. Caught him before.
I sometimes wonder how he recruited Messrs Dror and Uri Zernik. Obviously, they were handsomely rewarded... a couple of million NIS or more in today's currency.
And Uzi? How did he recruit Uzi as a card-carrying member of the crew?
Endnotes:
1. To me, it was clear all along the years that Mandelblit and Nitzan were crooks, although I had no clue until a few months ago that Shay Nitzan disappeared my criminal complaint, re: Judge Esperanza Alon. Given my intimate relationship with the Israeli justice system, one day in 2017, with a friend, I find myself in the elevator with Shay Nitzan. Naturally, I started singing... a song about corrupt State Attorney.
Shay Nitzan asked me: Are you trying to suggest that I am corrupt?
I never answered, just kept singing...
---
2017-08-29 Personal performance for State Attorney Shay Nitzan// הופעה פרטית לשי ניצן
2. As far as I know, Messrs. Dror and Uri Zernik belong to the camp that opposes any judicial reform, since it threatens "Israeli democracy". Makes perfect sense.
3. Daphna Hacker, an internationally renowned Israeli family law professor (Tel Aviv University), described the family courts already in 2016 as a "total jungle" to be avoided at all costs, and wondered why they continued to be called "courts".
I disagree with the "jungle" diagnosis. It implies disorder and chaos, primal urges driving the courts. That is not the case at all. On the contrary, there is perfect order.
Take, for example, the case of Judge Esperanza Alon: Her service contract with the Robert Zernik ended in 2013. However, she continued to monitor Guardianship File 1829-06-10 for the next ten years! And that - even after she moved to the District Court in 2015 (that is where Net-HaMishpat is a key instrument of the corruption). And then, in January 2013, when she figured out that Ima z"l had passed away, she set Hila Gurevitz, her best friend, to take over.
What other sector in the Israeli economy do you know that offers such a service???
Daphna Hacker knows better. What she described in that article was obviously a corrupt court system. However, she avoided the word "corruption", and limited herself to "ruling arbitrarily"...
The family courts are uniquely corrupt in the Israeli court system. The reasons are obvious: It's the ingenious model that Israeli legal scholars developed and implemented in the 1995 Family Court Act. It added two new unique features to the new family courts:
1. Closed doors,
2. Flexible court procedures (Article 8(a) of the Act).
The wisdom of the generations says that each of these features, by itself, is enough to corrupt a court. Obviously, the wisdom of the generations had skipped the Israeli experts.
One should also note, that although the family courts are known for well over a decade to be generally corrupt. And yet, there has been no enforcement; no judge was held accountable.
4. One should recall that in 2010, WikiLeaks published a cable from the U.S. embassy in Israel to the State Department (by the way, my name appears in some 20 records in the WikiLeaks archives). It was a report signed by the Ambassador, titled:
"Israel - promised land for organized crime?"
The report claimed that Israel was experiencing a merger of government agencies and organized crime. However, the report claimed that there were no signs yet that organized crime had infiltrated the courts.
I respectfully disagree with the Honorable Ambassador. He was thinking of a model that is perhaps seen in Italy and Mexico, where organized crime gets its people appointed as judges. However, the more common model is of organized crime inside the courts, interacting with criminal elements outside the court. That is what we find in the Haifa Family Court or the Jerusalem Family Court.
5. One should keep it all in perspective: The family courts are nothing compared to the military courts in the occupied West Bank. Those courts are one of the pillars of the Apartheid regime. The Israeli attorneys who serve as judges and prosecutors in the military courts in the occupied West Bank should be held accountable for crimes against humanity... that is what Apartheid is.
