Maariv claims ex-staffer tried to frame Olmert; prosecution dismisses article as filled with inaccuracies and distortions

An American-Israeli woman attempted to topple former prime minister Ehud Olmert for political reasons, and gave false testimony under oath, with the support of a rabbi, Maariv claimed on Thursday.

The rabbi concerned denied the newspaper’s account to The Times of Israel, however.

And the state prosecutor, in a statement, dismissed the Maariv article as being filled with inaccuracies and distortions designed to discredit the witness and the prosecution. Contrary to the article’s central claims, the statement said, the witness was not a central witness in the case, and never said she was acting on the instructions of an extremist rabbi in order to bring down the prime minister. **

According to the Maariv report, Rachel Moore was considered a key witness by the prosecution in the case against Olmert for double billing on trips abroad, known as the Rishon Tours affair. Olmert, who resigned as prime minister at the height of the corruption allegations against him more than three years ago, was acquitted in this case and another major case on Tuesday, and convicted of a more minor crime.

For over a year in the late 1990s, Moore — who had just moved to Israel — worked as Olmert’s travel coordinator, first when he was mayor of Jerusalem, and then when he was a member of Knesset, Maariv reported. In 2000 Moore moved back to the US, where she became more religious, married and raised a family.

Two weeks after the Rishon Tours affair first surfaced in July 2008, the prosecution received a call from Moore who said she had “important information” about Olmert, the Maariv report said.

In fact, however, The Times of Israel has been told, Moore did not work for Olmert after he left the mayor’s office. She also did not become more religious after moving to the US, and nor was this asserted in court. Furthermore, she did not claim to have “important information,” but rather initiated a call in which she stated what her job been, when she had been employed, and where she could be contacted.

According to Maariv, in testimony via a video conference from New York — Moore reportedly refused to travel to Israel — the witness seemed confused and inconsistent. Under cross-examination, it emerged that she had lied, including with a story about Olmert flying to China — including his full itinerary and trip details — when Olmert had never been to China before 2004, years after Moore had left his employ, Maariv claimed.

According to the article Moore cracked, and confessed. She said her first phone call to the prosecution, and her subsequent testimony, had been done in order to “bury the prime minister,” the report said.

According to Maariv, an Israeli rabbi named Joseph Isaac Lifshitz, who works for the conservative Shalem Center, gave her a religious ruling to complain against Olmert.

The prosecution’s statement, however, said the assertion that Moore cracked under questioning, and admitted to working under a rabbi’s ruling in order to bring down the prime minister, “simply didn’t happen. These matters were not accepted in the court’s decision and the witness never said what was attributed to her” in the Maariv article, the prosecution statement said.

According to the prosecution statement, “What was in fact a consultation by an Orthodox woman with her rabbi was turned into a so-called ‘instruction’ from an ‘extremist right-wing rabbi’, and all with ‘the goal of ousting an Israeli prime minister’. There’s not a grain of truth in this. As stated, the witness did not say she followed the instruction of a rabbi or anybody else, and did not ‘confess’ to acting on any such motivation.”

In a written response to The Times of Israel, Lifshitz said the claims relating to him in the Maariv article were false. “It is a lie,” he said. Moore asked if there was any prohibition in “testifying against Olmert,” Lifshitz said, to which “my response was that one has to say the truth” and there is no religious prohibition “in true testimony.”

Maariv said Olmert’s defense team also established that Moore had invited Lifshitz to lecture at her synagogue on “the holiness of Jerusalem and the threats against our holy city,” threats that could be understood as referring to the peace negotiations Olmert was holding at the time.

Maariv wrote about additional findings that involved Moore’s husband’s blog, and connections between Lifshitz and right-wing organizations and donors in Israel.

The Times of Israel was told that Lifshitz did not speak in the synagogue on the political topic asserted by Maariv, but rather, presented an academic paper about the sanctity of the land of Israel, in theological terms, based on an academic paper he has just delivered at Princeton.

In a written statement to The Times of Israel, Moore stated: “I came forward voluntarily purely out of a sense of civic duty. I answered the questions of the police and attorneys honestly, with no instruction from others of any kind, no additional motive, no agenda, other than to simply tell the truth. Anything written to the contrary is total fiction and slander, political posturing and games. Anyone who chooses to read the court records can see this in black and white for themselves.”

The Rishon Tours affair was one of two cases (along with the Talansky case) that prompted Olmert to resign his post as prime minister in 2008, at a time of intense negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. Following the unanimous Jerusalem District Court verdict that acquitted Olmert of both major charges, and found him guilty on a third, more minor charge, there have been calls from some in Kadima, Olmert’s party, to investigate the state attorney’s handling of the case.

The attorney-general has criticized those who have attacked the state prosecution system, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed his confidence in the legal system.

** This article was corrected and updated on November 7.