According to the prosecution, this email was immediately linked from Azoulay to Ben-Zaken and Ben-Zaken to two mailboxes of the defendant, which was certainly exposed to the contents of the email. The prosecution went on to claim that since the said email was the result of the improper actions taken vis-à-vis the Petroleum Council, it can be inferred from its sending to the defendant, and from its exposure to its contents, with the defendant's knowledge, about other improper actions that were taken, including the "Ben-Eliezer-Mimran" conversation.
The defense did not dispute the very fact that the email was transferred from Azoulay to Ben-Zaken, nor did it be sent to the defendant, but explained that the email – P/23A – was sent to a mailbox that is not active on the Manofim server. The defense supported the argument in the testimony of Dror Mizrahi, the owner of a computer company and the person who provided the computer services to Manofim since 2012. According to Mizrahi's testimony, the mailbox at the Manofim company to which the email was sent was first opened in 2016, and was not active except for a number of correspondence sent in 2008 for the purpose of examination (Prov. p. 1709, para. 13; N/26). With regard to the second address to which the email was allegedly sent (P/29), it was noted that this was the extraction of evidence that was extracted from Ben-Zaken's mobile phone, and the prosecution failed to prove that it was an email identical to P/23A, or to prove that it was an email that was sent.
Although this issue was comprehensively addressed in the parties' summaries, I do not believe that this is an issue that needs to be decided, and it seems to me that whether it is determined that the defendant was exposed to the contents of the email, or whether it is determined the opposite, this does not contribute to the decision on the question of whether the defendant knew about the "Ben-Eliezer-Mimran" conversation.
I will explain:
All that can be understood from the email is that Council member Adv. Mizrahi has changed her professional position regarding the transfer of the rights in the drilling license. In other words, there is no criminal "fingerprint" in the email, from which it can be inferred that the change in position is the result of improper pressure exerted on her (a claim that was not even made in the amended indictment filed against Ben-Zaken), and it is not possible to understand from the fact that it came "in a chain" from Azoulay, that it reached her in improper ways.