Middle East
Motti Gilat
The Grand Inquisitor
Mordechai (Motti) Gilat, 52, is one of Israel’s most distinguished investigative journalists. His latest journalistic coup concerns former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara. Both are under investigation for fraud after Gilat broke the story on their misuse of government funds.
Who is this reporter who makes politicians tremble? “[Gilat] is obsessed, suspicious of everyone, and often resorts to controversial means to achieve his sacred goal of delivering Israel from evil,” writes Amir Ben David in Tel Aviv’s liberal Ha’aretz of the man who is a nonstop fighter for justice.
Gilat, who writes for the mass-circulation Yediot Aharonot in Tel Aviv, is every public figure’s nightmare. When a public figure receives a call from Gilat, he “imagines his own photograph splashed across the front page of Yediot, he begins to sweat,” writes Ben David.
For his part, Gilat declines to give interviews, doesn’t appear on TV talk shows, and maintains his anonymity. “So much so that an aura of mystery has formed around him,” writes Ben David. Only a handful of Israeli journalists can present a list of achievements that approaches Gilat’s. But he also pays a heavy price, according to Ben David: “[It has] turned him into a self-compartmentalized, manipulative individual and made him suspicious almost to the point of paranoia.”
