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Imagine a country where a former president is set to go to jail for rape, where the previous prime minister is standing trial for graft and where the foreign minister faces charges of money laundering.
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Imagine also a country where police recommend the CEO and former chairman of a major bank be tried for fraud and where leading candidates for promotion in the military and prison service have lost out because of conduct deemed dishonorable.
This is not an imaginary country. This is Israel, where a growing number of the elite is falling foul of the law.
The slew of high-profile scandals has tarnished the reputation of an entire political class and also risks hurting the standing of the much-respected judiciary, which has been criticized for dragging out sensitive cases for years.
However, the morass of probes does not mean the country is drowning in graft, analysts say, with Israel coming in a respectable 30th place in Transparency International's 2010 corruption index, well above the Middle East norm.
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Instead, it shows the country has a functioning set of checks and balances that is helping impose a new moral code.
"You could say Israel is corrupt, but you could also say it shows how our police, attorney general and judges will not be intimidated," said Gidi Grinstein, the head of the independent, Tel Aviv-based Reut Institute think-tank.
"Israelis are ashamed of the scandals, but can be proud of the clean-up," he added.
CHANGING ETHICS
The most recent case to hit the headlines revolves around ultranationalist Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who was informed on Wednesday that he was likely to be indicted for fraud, money laundering and witness tampering.
Lieberman, who will be forced to resign if charges follow, denies wrongdoing in an investigation that dates back 15 years.
"The common denominator in these recent scandals is that the suspected crimes were all committed or pertain to something that happened a decade or more ago," said Amotz Asa-El, a political commentator and former executive editor of the Jerusalem Post.
"Today's politicians, the ones in their 30s, now understand the cost of stepping out of line. I therefore think we will see less of these types of scandals in the future," he added.
Others are not so sure, arguing that Israel's brand of coalition politics, which places considerable power in the hands of small, niche parties, is fertile ground for dodgy deals.
