Shana Tova to all my friends and relatives...
I don't write often, so this is very long. You don't have to read it all for this holiday. You may keep it for Passover as well.
Sefi
Update
This Rosh HaShana, I am held in the Haifa Family Court by my two dear brothers, Uri and Dror, in a lawsuit pertaining to my mother's estate.
My two dear brothers are true keepers of the heritage of their father, Robert Rafael Zernik. In collusion with Uri and Dror, he started the court fraud regarding my mother's will already in 2010.
I offered them a compromise - give me less than you previously agreed, as my part of the estate, we will end this farce, and you will never hear from me again. The only note, which could possibly be considered a response was from Uri, explaining that court processes are the way to keep the family together...
And yet, I find this engagement in a court process in an Israeli Family Court uniquely interesting. After all, the Israeli Family Courts are notorious for their corruption. See below opinion of a leading Israeli expert, Law Prof. Daphna Hacker of Tel Aviv Univ.
Given their secretive nature, my personal engagement in an Israeli Family Court process provides me with a unique opportunity to study issues that I have never had chance to record... See below a fake electronic court record from the family 2013 court file, and a September 2024 letter to me by the Administration of Courts, which is a ridiculous attempt to whitewash the fake by another fake.
One may ask: What would have my mother thought about this entire affair?
The title of all court records in this case is: "In RE: Estate of the late Rivka Shami Zernik".
Regarding such court cases, litigating wills and estates, Judge Shaul Shohat wrote: "The true litigant is the deceased, that person who is present but absent, whose dictates we are commanded to uphold. She is the true client of the court. Her will is the only will we should take into account."
What my mother thought of a fake process I know very well...
My mother taught for many years in the Hebrew Reali School in Haifa, like her uncle the writer Yitzhaq Shami (1888-1949) before her. And yet, she kept a distance from the school's top management.
My childhood memory, which was in the background of my studies at school, is related to my admission: When I was going up to the third grade, my mother enrolled me and my brothers in the Reali school. Entrance exams were required. My mother had no doubt that I would be admitted, since I was an excellent student and an avid reader.
However, my two brothers (whom I was a much better student than) were admitted, and I allegedly failed the entrance exam.
My mother questioned me about the exam. I remembered all the questions, and it was clear to me that I answered all the questions correctly (arithmetic, Hebrew, bible). It turned out that I wasn't tested at all by a teacher. I was subjected to a fake, simulated entrance exam by a secretary. I remember her name even today - Yonina. Apparently no teacher was willing to be a part of the disgrace.
It turned out that the top management had decided in advance not to accept any students for the third grade, but since my mother was a teacher, they produced for a fake entrance exam for me, and determined that I failed.
My mother did not give up, even though she was a young, new, Mizrahi teacher at a school with a conservative and powerful German-Jewish administration. She insisted, and in the end I was accepted into the third grade.
It should be especially noted that she decided to explain the entire affair to the child in the second grade without trying to make it sound pretty. It was the first time I was exposed to a fake process - a subject that fascinates me to this day...
What did the expert say about the Israeli Family Courts?
Prof. Daphna Hacker of Tel Aviv Univ Law School is a leading Israeli expert on family law and the family courts. She was a member of Ministry of Justice committees for reform of the family courts...
More on her academic work: https://en-law.tau.ac.il/profile/dafna
A 2016 newspaper report documented what she wrote about the Israeli Family Courts in an informal chat with other legal experts:
"There is a total jungle in the [family] courts. By all means, avoid getting there."
"Do you remember [Law Prof Menachem] Mautner's seminal paper "Descent of formalism and ascent of values"? At least in my area [of family law], and I hear that in other areas as well, we are in the era of "descent of values and ascent of the bordello." If judges fail to obey the law, fail to respect Supreme Court precedents - why do we go on calling it a Justice System? It is not even Charismatic Justice per [Max] Weber - we don't go to these judges for their charisma. It is not Customary Justice [also per Weber], because we are not a community. So what is this thing that calls itself a justice system, but is conducting itself arbitrarily, pursuant to absolute discretion of those who sit in court? The time has come to investigate and write about it -- we are captives of a system that has forgotten that it is a justice system.
If this is the outcome of descent of formalism, I am going to be a religious formalist - the damages are horrible and scary. By all means avoid getting there - there is no justice there.
There is no way to teach family law any longer. There are judges - but there is no law. It has never been like that in the past, and even when the Supreme Court told them [family judges] "calm down". they go on doing as they please."
The Zernik family got the best court that money could buy...
*
* On December 15, 2022, my mother, Rivka Shami Zernik passed away.
* On February 3, 2023, I had a rare meeting with my brother Uri in Haifa. Uri asked for my opinion, how the dispute regarding our mother's estate would end. In the blink of an eye I answered: Some sort of deceit in the Haifa Family Court. I reminded him that he himself (as well as Dror) was part of one such deceit in affidavits they filed in the Haifa Family Court in June 2010...
Uri asked for my forgiveness, again, as he did several times over the years before. Neither of us ever considered these requests for forgiveness truthful... I asked him: Why did you do it? Uri answered: Aba asked me.
I then asked him about the deceitful affidavits that he and Dror filed in 2016, after my father had passed away, in the office of the Magistrate. Uri explained, deceitfully as ever: We were really worried about you...
* On February 14, 2023, my brother Uri sent a sanctimonious email to his two brothers, in his typical over the top style:
"... In simple words I ask the two of you to talk and compromise.
Three privileged brothers, who received an inheritance from their parents and can't reach a compromise without hiring a lawyer and a mediator, and now will apparently even resort to the Family Court.
The land is burning -- if you haven't noticed...
I am willing to accept whatever compromise the two of you reach.
All I have to say is shame, shame, shame..."
* By August 28, 2023, the 3 brothers signed an agreement, and it appeared that finally the matter was behind us.
* By May 3, 2024, Dror got into an explosive rage. He announced that any use of an external, independent, jointly appointed art appraiser, as stipulated in the agreement that we had signed in August 2023, was harmful personally to him. He insisted that we must accept the two funny pages in the pic below, which he had produced, instead of using an art appraiser. Alternatively - we should let him produce the art assessments himself... What got him triggered in particular was what he described as the "legal logic", which he challenged, by declaring: "My ignorance shall lead the way".
I was completely mesmerized by the performance. He was presumably an educated man... He grew up in the same household and the same school as I did. But it appeared that we were from 2 very different civilizations...
As I noted later, in an email to the usual recipients, there was and is a part of it that is no doubt related to ignorance. But beyond the ignorance, there was some brutish, shameless lack of good faith, that posed as being the victim of a purportedly harmful agreement to use a competent art assessor.
But then again, in the same explosive rage Dror referred for the first time since my mother passed away to his good experience with Attorney Amos Zadika in 2013... (see below).
As one who has specialized in the study of frauds, my impression is that a person who was initiated and successfully resorted to judicial corruption as a way of doing business, would prefer that mode to others in future transactions as well... The return on investment is very good, and there is no risk involved. It's usually 100% guaranteed.
In short, my speculation, with no shred of evidence is that by May 2024 Dror had fully re-established his relationship with crooked Attorney Amos Zadika and the new course and new game plan were determined: Getting the 3 privileged brothers into the Haifa Family Court, which is Attorney Amos Zadika's field of games.
* On June 5, 2024, Uri's attorney, Yoav Salomon, filed a lawsuit against me in the Haifa Family Court. As I noted in an email to Uri, Dror, and their attorneys, this lawsuit failed to include an affidavit by Uri, required by law, failed to include the correct certificate of counsel by Uri, required by law, but included 4 misleading certificates, which purported that Uri's attorney represented me as well... failed to narrate a factual cause for the litigation... In a response email, Uri explained that his attorney, Yoav Salomon, was "straight as a ruler", was "part of the family," and in fact represented me as well...
* By July 31, 2024, Dror's attorney, Rachel Ben Ari, in an email to the 3 brothers, boasted that the lawsuit was in fact a joint initiative of Uri's and Dror's attorneys... but at the end, they decided to designate Uri Plaintiff ("Petitioner") and Dror Defendant ("Respondent 2"), while Plaintiff Uri and Defendant Dror are in full agreement...
In short, it is this special kind of a lawsuit, where the parties designation is arbitrary, unrelated to any factual basis, where the matter being litigated and the cause of the litigation are undefined, where the fundamentals of court procedure are violated, and a judge does as she pleases... an Israeli Family Court...
Some laughs for the Jewish New Year
Between genocide in Gaza, a murderous apartheid in the occupied West Bank, carnage in Lebanon, and Iranian missile attacks, we still have some laughs:
On September 4, 2024, I had the honor of receiving a fake on fake letter from the Israeli Administration of Courts (below). I guess it should be considered as the official recognition of the Zernik family's contribution to Israeli court corruption...
The letter documents that the Administration of Courts ran a fake review/investigation, purportedly on my behalf, based on a fake complaint, which I had never filed, regarding the fake April 4, 2013 electronic court record from the Haifa Family Court (below), which I published, bearing the fake "Not Signed Yet" watermark.
The record itself is the fake Protocol (minutes) of the fake April 4, 2013 court hearing (off the court calendar) regarding Dror's appointment as my mother's additional, joint conservator.
I was not present there. I had no interest in the process. I had supported my father's appointment in 2010 (regardless of the fact that the process was initiated in fraud), and I had neither supported nor objected to Dror's appointment in 2013 (regardless of his part in the 2010 false and misleading affidavits).
My son Asa was not present in the court hearing either, but Dror and my father were. And yet, Asa is listed as being present, and also as a party in the court file - "Petitioner", while Dror is listed neither as a party nor as present in the courtroom. These are just a couple of examples of the false nature of this document.
One may ask: Why wasn't I present there?
In March 2013 I received a strange, fake court notice from Attorney Amos Zadika (who represented my father and Dror - with or without certificates of Counsel of Record) that I was summoned to the April 4 court hearing. However, I had figured out in advance that notorious Judge Esperanza Alon (I love her first name), together with crooked Attorney Amos Zadika were planning a fake court hearing, and probably some action against me on behalf of my father. My father had earlier told me that he had hired Amos Zadika for exorbitant fees to take care of me... And a court corruption website reported the gossip regarding the special relationship between Attorney Amos Zadika and some female Haifa Family Court judges...
One may ask: Why was there a need to take care of me?
Well, in June 2010, my dear late father, in collusion with my two dear brothers started a court process for appointing my father Conservator for my mother, who was an Alzheimer patient. The purpose of the appointment was not related to caring for my mother. Instead, the intent was to defraud my mother by scuttling her will. Specifically - diminish or deprive me of my part in her will, related to common property. The three of them tried to keep the court process a secret from me and from my mother's brother, Eli, but that didn't work out. Once I learned about the process, I went to court and inspected the court file. I found there a fraudulent affidavit by my dear late father and 2 affidavits in its support by my 2 dear brothers. My father was furious that I performed the inspection and found his fraudulent affidavit...
The fake results of the fake review/investigation by the Administration of Courts are that the Administration of Courts denies that it had produced the "Not Signed Yet" electronic watermark as part of the features of Net HaMishpat - case management system of all the Israeli courts. They conclude that the electronic watermark was created in Haifa "manually, or as a result of some fault in the system"... At the same time the letter tries to advance the fake conclusion that this is an authentic, valid court record...
If one accepts the results of this fake investigation, one should conclude that judges in the Haifa Family Court hired some hackers, who hacked Net HaMishpat, which is supposed to be a super secure government system, and adulterated electronic court records in the system... And this was all purportedly provided as part of Attorney Amos Zadika's services??? Produced especially for the Zernik family???
The numerous ways in which the system should be deemed unacceptable as a court case management system, and an instrument of judicial fraud, were the subject of my reports to the UN Human Rights Council and papers which were published in academic periodicals since 2012...
One may ask: How was Attorney Zadika planning to take care of me?
I don't know exactly. My best guess is that he was going to ask the Judge to impose punitive fines on me.
What for? It remains unclear. I believe that Judge Esperanza Alon was going to try to cause me to "misbehave" in court, then punish me for that. She was notorious for punitive actions against litigants...
It appears that not being there made the plan fail. In the April 4, 2013 "Not Signed Yet" Protocol Attorney Zadika asked Judge Esperanza Alon to impose sanctions on me...
In a funny affected manner Esperanza writes her response: "I am sorry, but I can't do that... My impression is of a complicated but cohesive family... and there is the right to access the courts..."
Fake processes - "Corruption, once exposed, has no refuge but in audacity,” Cornelius Tacitus
The fake review process of the fake Protocol record by the Administration of Courts was no surprise for me:
1. A couple of months earlier I received a similar letter, recording the outcome of another fake review/investigation by the Administration of Courts, purportedly on my behalf, of a fake complaint, which I had never filed. The subject of the review/investigation was the unlawful entry in Net HaMishpat in the Tel Aviv Small Claims Court, to the benefit of Bank HaPoalim - the largest bank in Israel.
2. A few years ago I received a letter from the office of the Israeli Ombudsman of the Judiciary (a retired Supreme Court justice), informing me that a review/investigation process was initiated on my purported complaint against Tel Aviv District Court Judge Eliyahu Bachar. I had never filed a complaint. It took several letters and my determination, before the Ombudsman of the Judiciary stopped that fake process. Eventually it turned out that the fake complaint review process was launched by request of Emi Palmor, Director General of the Ministry of Justice. I consider this case much worse than the latest cases in the Administration of Courts, since provisions of the Ombudsman of the Judiciary complaint review process are stipulated by law.
3. A few years ago I received a letter from Moshe 'Chico' Edri, Israel Police Tel Aviv District Commander, that he initiated on my behalf a complaint in the State Attorney's Office, dept of police investigations, against a Tel Aviv policeman. In this case the fraud was of the opposite type - no complaint was filed by Moshe 'Chico' Edri, and no investigation was initiated.
