The Knesset Audit Committee will hold a special session this week on the Avishai Raviv affair.  A proposal will be raised for a public investigation of the entire matter, including the functioning of the State Prosecution in this episode.  Atty.-Gen. Rubenstein, who was sharply criticized for the way in which he attempted to prevent the publication of the protocol of a GSS-Prosecution meeting regarding Raviv, will be asked to appear at the session. 

Israel's Media Watch has retained the services of noted attorney Yoram Sheftel to represent it in its Supreme Court suit to have television reporter Eitan Oren indicted.  IMW had originally asked that Oren be tried for screening the staged swearing-in ceremony by Avishai Raviv's Eyal organization.  Staged initiation rites were broadcast on several occasions on Israel TV, both Channel One and Channel Two.  After the airing on Channel One on September 22, Yisrael Medad of IMW asked the Israel Broadcasting Authority about the authenticity of the clip. The latter responded in writing on Nov. 2, 1995 - two days before Rabin's assassination - that the segment was "authentic and worthy of journalistic coverage."  The Shamgar Commission later found that "Raviv... received the help of the television in that it broadcast the swearing-in ceremony; [this] was nothing more than a fake, which anyone who was there most certainly noticed."  Despite this, almost three years after IMW began inquiring about the affair,  Attorney-General Rubenstein finally decided to close the case against Oren "for lack of evidence."  IMW now claims, based on the recently-publicized protocol of the minutes of the meeting at which this conclusion was being formulated, that the case was first decided to be closed, and the exact justification was decided upon later.

The veracity of the Raviv-Beinish document, approved last week for publication by the Supreme Court, continues to be the subject of controversy.  Justice Dorit Beinish denies that she approved (when she was State Prosecutor) the frame-up of an innocent person - as the protocol claims.  In addition, Chezi Kallo, Raviv's direct GSS supervisor, also denies a comment attributed to him in the protocol.  Kallo is recorded as having said, "In hindsight, had we cut off our ties with Raviv altogether, he may have led us to the murderer."  Appearing on a Channel Two television newsmagazine, Kallo said that this makes no logical sense:  "How would cutting ties with Raviv lead to the murderer?  This makes no sense at all!"
 An alternative understanding of the document, however, places the comment in the context of previous remarks to the effect that Raviv was getting "out of hand," and that threats of tighter discipline against him might have then led to better results. 

Journalist Yoav Yitzchak - whose petition against the gag order on the protocols was accepted by the Supreme Court last week - is not impressed. "Such denials create a new problem," Yitzchak said to Arutz-7 today. "Let's assume that Beinish is telling the truth, that she did not permit Raviv to incriminate an innocent person to protect his cover - this then means that we have a new, no less serious situation: GSS agent Ben Ami passed on false information to the Attorney-General and the State Prosecution in order to prevent an indictment against Raviv." 

Yitzchak also offered his own personal "scoops" on the case:  For one, the minutes of the original meeting, on which the protocol is based, are located in the vault of Atty.-Gen. Elyakim Rubenstein. "Not only that, but the official signature of then-Atty.-Gen. Ben Ya'ir - attesting that the document is an accurate record of what went on at that meeting - appears on the official copy of the protocol!"  Yitzchak said that he also knows the identity of the "innocent person" who was framed with the alleged approval of Hon. Beinish, "but I want to [publicize] something on this, so I will
not reveal it at this point."