A-G: Gov't dismissal of chief prosecutor while PM on criminal trial is illegal

Yahoo

08-08-2025

The government is slated today to push through a final vote to dismiss Baharav-Miara. What will likely happen next is that the High Court of Justice will provide a judicial review of the decision.
The way that the government has gone about dismissing Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara is against the law, riddled with disingenuous political motivations, and a glaring red flag for the future of the role, its independence, and the rule of law, the A-G said on Monday, ahead of the expected final vote to seal her dismissal.
Baharav-Miara pointed out that this aggressively fast dismissal process could not be divorced from the challenge that the government is currently facing: coalition cohesion.
Undermining this cohesion are issues pertaining, for example, to the draft-exemption law, faulty cases concerning political intervention in law enforcement, sectoral budgets that do not align with the law, and political appointments made based on personal connections, not merit, she continued.
As for the firing process of Baharav-Miara, High Court Deputy Chief Justice Noam Sohlberg ruled in July, following petitions against the decision, that this will require judicial review and will not come into effect immediately.
In essence, Sohlberg's ruling cooled down some of the intense flames surrounding the unprecedented move against the person serving both as the chief legal adviser to the government and as its head of prosecution.
Sohlberg's compromise on timing opens the door to petitions against the decision. Soon after the news broke of the committee's decision, the Movement for Quality Government in Israel, for one, petitioned to challenge it in court. In all probability, petitioners will also request that the court issue an injunction against the decision, effectively stopping it from taking immediate effect.
Dismissing her is 'the removal of one of the main and last checks that existed in Israeli jurisprudence on the power of the government,' Baharav-Miara wrote on Monday.
In her sharply-worded letter, the A-G surmised that the reasons provided by Justice Minister Yariv Levin in his insistence on her dismissal indicate that he is looking for an attorney-general 'who will simply obey the government and legalize its intended violations of the law.'
Levin, for instance, is seeking to make it possible 'for eligible haredi (ultra-Orthodox) men to avoid being drafted into the military,' as well as allowing for 'political interference in police matters,' she continued.
Not only that, but in dismissing and replacing the A-G, the government is directly challenging her as the chief prosecutor in the cases against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other ministers. These cases may be affected by the dismissal, she wrote.
The government has stated time and again that the working relationship between it and the legal advisory has become so strained that it is impossible to continue like this; replacing Baharav-Miara is the only possible solution.
Opponents view the move as aggressive and drastic, as well as dangerous in rendering powerless one of the last remaining checks on the government's power.
The current legal protocol for hiring or dismissing an attorney-general was codified in the year 2000, following the Shamgar Commission and the Bar-On-Hebron affair. The conditions assume that a hiring or dismissal could happen relatively quickly to avoid leaving the post vacant.
In January 1997, lawyer Roni Bar-On was appointed attorney-general by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He was not qualified for the position and resigned two days later after public and political outrage.
About a week later, it was revealed that Bar-On's appointment was part of a deal between Netanyahu and Shas head Arye Deri, who was then the internal security minister, to advance a plea bargain in Deri's corruption trial.
Deri pushed for the appointment in exchange for his party's support of the controversial Hebron Agreement for the withdrawal of IDF forces from some parts of the city. He was later indicted and was barred from politics for a decade.
Deri was later indicted and was barred from politics for a decade
The Shamgar Commission was then created to establish the criteria for a committee that would ensure this would not happen again. Today, there is the public-professional committee, which must approve the candidate and provide the government with recommendations before any decision is made on the matter.
Levin, however, failed to fill in all the necessary positions.
The panel should be made up of a retired Supreme Court justice as chairperson, appointed by the Supreme Court president and by the approval of the justice minister; a former justice minister or attorney-general, chosen by the government; an MK, selected by the Knesset's Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee; a lawyer, determined by the Israel Bar Association; and a legal academic, chosen by the deans of the law faculties.
BAHARAV-MIARA noted on Monday that the decision ensures that there will be no objective third-party weighing in on the matter.
Moreover, she said, the decision itself contradicts Israeli legal precedence, has no factual or legal support, was rushed and not thorough, and effectively erases and ignores everything studied and gleaned from the Bar-On-Hebron affair.
'After the government failed to staff the committee based on the accepted and precedented protocols, it simply moved to change them in a hasty and faulty method,' wrote the A-G.
'What is so dangerous about this method is that it grants complete political control over the process. From now on, any government will be able to dismiss any attorney-general with a simple ministerial committee vote,' she said.
'Without any checks and balances or a filtering system against foreign influences over a process that must remain objective and not bend to the vision of any one government,' Baharav-Miara continued, 'the government will, in this, be operating against the law.'
The government wrote last month in its position, penned by Levin and by Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Minister Amichai Chikli (Likud) – who chairs the selection committee – that it could fill the positions for this panel because all relevant former attorneys-general and justice ministers opposed the government's decision.
This decision will affect the corpus of the role itself, Baharav-Miara wrote, changing it from an objective, merit-based role to one that is dependent on loyalty to the sitting government.
In Israel, the legislative and executive branches of the government are not truly split. The parliament (Knesset), which is the legislative branch, has 120 permanent members elected by proportional representation, while the government, which is the executive branch, is comprised of ministers.
All these ministers, including the premier, are typically also MKs. Further, members of the executive branch are part of the legislature, and the executive constantly depends on Knesset support to manifest its policies.
This is the basis for the argument for a strong judiciary, including the legal advisory.
As mentioned, proponents argue that the work relationship between the legal advisory and the government has become alarmingly unproductive, necessitating the A-G's dismissal.
Furthermore, they claim that, over the years, the legal advisory has usurped more power than it should have, and that the Shamgar Commission conditioned the hiring and dismissal of an A-G on its timeliness. In other words, the process should be efficient and flow smoothly.
Baharav-Miara addressed this point by saying that the commission was not faced with the situation where the sitting prime minister was knee-deep in a criminal trial.
What her dismissal means in this case, the A-G wrote, is an attempt to replace the chief prosecutor against a prime minister who is under trial, right in the middle of the cross-examination section of the proceedings.
This points to 'a clear and alarming conflict of interest by the government toward the A-G,' Baharav-Miara said.
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