81. 2026-07-02 Request to inspect and to copy records of the Estate File of the Late Rivka Shami Zernik, filed with the Administrator General [APAK], Haifa and North District

Joseph Zernik, PhD, LLB, son of the late Rivka Shami Zernik, claims that the alleged ongoing (as of writing this note) fraud in her Estate exposed an unprecedented corruption scheme in the Haifa District. Initially, the alleged fraud centered on litigation in the Haifa Family Court, EF 11650-06-24 – Request for appointing Estate Administrators. Advocates Rachel Ben-Ari and Yoav Solomon filed the request as a "joint enterprise," according to Ben-Ari. Ben-Ari is a highly reputed attorney who heads the 35-attorney Ben-Ari–Fish Law Firm. Among Ben-Ari’s achievements, she served for 2 terms as a member of the Judicial Selection Committee. During that time, she promoted Hila Gurevitz’s appointment to a judicial post. Gurevitz’s appearance as a judge in this affair remains dubious, since her assignment data to court file EF 11650-06-24 is unclear, and she refused to explain. Before that, she appeared, starting January 11, 2023, for almost 2 years in the related court file AP 1829-06-10. Yet, she later seemed to deny her appearance in that file. Ben-Ari claims that Judge Gurevitz lawfully appointed her on December 1, 2024, as Estate Administrator for the Estate of the Late Rivka Shami Zernik. Joseph Zernik contests the legality of that appointment. A main argument against the legality of that appointment is that Ben Ari failed to perform the 3 Estate Administrator’s duties prescribed in the Succession Law, 1965: 1) filing an inventory (Parta), 2) filing financial reports, 3) providing full answers to heirs’ requests for information. Initially, Ben-Ari seemed to have filed the Parta on time, on January 30, 2025. However, the Law prescribes that the filing with the Heir include a certificate of delivery of the same record to the Administrator General (Apak). The certificate was missing from Ben-Ari’s filing, and she wouldn’t respond to requests for information. Therefore, the Heir, Joseph Zernik, contacted the Apak Haifa office and asked for copies of all records in his late mother’s Estate file. The Apak swiftly responded (although no formal request was filed) and emailed Zernik the Parta copy, held by the Apak Haifa office.1 It came with a cover email note that explained that it was the only report in the Estate Administration file maintained by the Apak in this case. Upon examining the copy received from the Apak Haifa office, Zernik detected clear forensic signs that the record originated from a record filed by Ben-Ari as a paper record, not an electronic record. The Succession Law explicitly requires such records to be filed through an online system. Zernik suspected that the Apak Haifa office colluded with Ben-Ari and accepted an unlawful filing. To clarify this point, Zernik then asked the Apak Haifa office a simple question: What was the file number of the Estate Administration file maintained by the Apak Haifa office in this case, from which the Parta was provided? The Apak Haifa office refused to answer that question and, with it, stopped communicating with Zernik. Therefore, Zernik filed a formal request to inspect on July 2, 2026. The Apak Haifa office refused to respond to the request itself (see a copy of the response in this archive), creating a situation where Zernik would have to initiate another court action to obtain this basic information. A simple question about the court file number of a record that was willingly provided quickly escalated. It became apparent that the entire managerial level in the Haifa office and the national office were involved in the scheme. 124. Two copies of January 28, 2025 "Initial Estate Inentory" [פרטה] that were forwarded on January 30, 2025, by Adv. Rachel Ben-Ari to Heir Joseph Zernik and to the APAK’s office, Haifa and the North District https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23851681