Justice Minister Yariv Levin launched on Wednesday evening a process intended to remove Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara from her position.
The move was a long time coming and was prepared meticulously. It included a series of documents and letters intended to cover all bases. These included requests to the Knesset Speaker and government secretary to appoint the two bodies’ representatives to a requisite statutory advisory committee. It also included an 84-page letter to the government’s ministers requesting that they support a proposal for a no-confidence vote in the A-G and outlining the charges against her.
But the crown jewel was a link to an online database including 886 (!) pages of approximately 90 documents, the vast majority of which were A-G opinions whose alleged intention was to intentionally trip up the government and lead to its downfall.
But rather than damning evidence against the A-G, the documents provide a roadmap of the government’s initiatives since its inception in late December 2022 – and shows that it repeatedly attempted to bypass legal requirements or Supreme Court rulings, with the A-G often serving as the only barrier.
These include, to name a few:
1. An opinion from February 2023 describing how the government proposal to give itself a majority in the Judicial Selection Committee will end the independence of the judicial branch, which in Israel is one of the only checks on government power.
2. An opinion by Deputy A-G Gil Limon pointing to problems in a government proposal to limit the statutory determination of incapacitation of the prime minister to cases in which he is physically unable to fulfill his duties.
3. A series of opinions by Limon beginning in the summer of 2024 opposing Labor Minister Yoav Ben Tzur’s attempts to bypass the loss of daycare subsidies for yeshiva students who were legally required to enlist in the IDF.
4. An opinion by Deputy A-G Avital Sompolinski from June 2024 opposing a law proposal to enable the government to control the appointment of the judicial system watchdog, on the grounds that it could lead to political attempts to intimidate judges. A version of the bill passed into law this week.
5. An opinion by Baharav-Miara from June 2024 regarding legal requirements to appoint a new Public Service Commissioner, an important gatekeeper, after the government decided to grant this power solely to the prime minister.
Levin’s letter to the ministers paints a picture of a malicious, contrarian Attorney-General’s Office, willing to harm national security, block efforts to fight organized crime, and launch sham criminal investigations, all with the intent of bringing down the Netanyahu-led government.
The letter echoes Netanyahu’s conspiratorial claims against the “deep state” this week in the Knesset, which he said included a consortium of law enforcement, the judicial branch, the media, and the opposition, all intent on unfairly blaming him for the October 7 massacre, prosecuting his wife and close advisors, and removing him from power.
The'proof' provided
But the hundreds of pages of “proof” paint a different picture. Indeed, it showed that there were an unprecedented amount of clashes between ministers and the attorney general. But they were based on the fact that from its inception, the government attempted to fundamentally alter the balance of power between it and the Supreme Court, in a way that would likely have significantly weakened Israel’s only effective defender against government abuse of power; attempted, and continues to attempt, to unlawfully exempt a majority of haredi yeshiva students from IDF service; attempted to pass numerous laws that were blatantly unconstitutional – granting sweeping immunity to Members of Knesset from criminal prosecution, shutting down liberal news outlets, allowing the use of spyware against organized crime but not against government corruption; and the list goes on and on.
Both Levin in his letter, and former justice minister and current Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar’s in his announcement that he regretted appointing Baharav-Miara and supported her removal, mentioned two cases in which the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the government and against Baharav-Miara as proof that she was unfairly skewed against the government.
But Levin and Sa’ar did not mention the numerous cases in which the Supreme Court accepted the A-G’s interpretation of the law, and ruled exactly as the A-G predicted and warned – including in its watershed ruling in January 2024 to strike down the Reasonableness Clause, marking the first time in Israel’s history that the court intervened in a Basic Law.
They also did not mention the thousands of instances in which the A-G and her deputies did not oppose government polices but assisted it in achieving its objectives. The most obvious example of this is the A-G’s legal accompaniment of the war in Gaza, and her support for IDF military maneuvers even at a high cost of civilian casualties. Many Israelis and international bodies criticized the A-G for being too lenient and permissive.
The bottom line is that the A-G is a problem for the government not because of some vague personal vendetta, but because she has insisted, courageously at times, that the government act lawfully. Levin’s initiative to remove her, alongside his boycott of Supreme Court Chief Justice Yizhak Amit, and alongside Netanyahu’s attempt to blame Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar for the failures of October 7, are dangerous developments that serve as a reminder that the government has not wavered from its strategy, which began with the judicial reforms, to remove checks on its power and turn Israel into a Hungarian-style autocracy.