{"id":447753,"date":"2026-05-18T13:57:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T13:57:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/447753\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T13:57:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T13:57:17","slug":"high-court-orders-top-secret-gofman-affidavit-sent-to-benjamin-netanyahu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/447753\/","title":{"rendered":"High Court orders top-secret Gofman affidavit sent to Benjamin Netanyahu"},"content":{"rendered":"

The High Court of Justice<\/a> on Monday ordered that the classified affidavit submitted by Brig.-Gen. \u201cG\u201d in the petitions against IDF Maj.-Gen. Roman Gofman\u2019s appointment as Mossad chief should be transferred, without delay, to the relevant respondents who hold the proper security clearance \u2013 in this case, the government and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.<\/p>\n

The decision, issued by Justices Dafna Barak-Erez, Ofer Grosskopf, and Alex Stein, came after Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara submitted G\u2019s affidavit to the court in a sealed envelope, saying it had been classified \u201ctop secret\u201d by the military and not by her office.<\/p>\n

The court said that before any decision is made on the classification of the affidavit, it must be passed \u201cin the appropriate manner\u201d to the respondents who have the required clearance. The court also ordered that it be updated once this has been done, after which it will decide how the case should proceed.<\/p>\n

The affidavit has become the latest procedural flashpoint in the petitions challenging Netanyahu\u2019s decision to appoint Gofman as the next head of the Mossad. Gofman<\/a>, currently Netanyahu\u2019s military secretary, was approved by the Senior Appointments Advisory Committee and is scheduled to take office on June 2. The petitions center on the Ori Elmakayes affair, in which Elmakayes, then a minor, was allegedly used in an IDF-linked influence operation connected to the 210th Division while Gofman was its commander. Elmakayes was later detained and indicted, but the case against him collapsed.<\/p>\n

G\u2019s affidavit was requested by the court after last week\u2019s hearing, in order to clarify a May 2022 inquiry related to Gofman and the Elmakayes affair. The Attorney-General\u2019s<\/a> Office told the court that the affidavit was signed before a Military Advocate General\u2019s Corps lawyer who serves as the legal adviser to the IDF Intelligence Directorate, and that no one from Baharav-Miara\u2019s office was involved in preparing it or speaking with G.<\/p>\n

Baharav-Miara also asked to submit additional classified material, including her initial position sent to the head of the senior appointments committee, documents from the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) investigation file, and a letter from outgoing Mossad chief David Barnea.<\/a> She argued that the previous High Court hearing had taken place without the court seeing the full classified material.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu and the government, represented by attorney Harel Arnon, sharply opposed the request. Arnon argued that the court had asked for an affidavit only, and accused the attorney-general of trying to expand the case by submitting material that had not been before the appointments committee. He also argued that there was no classified material in Israel that the prime minister could not review, and asked the court to order that the affidavit be transferred to Netanyahu\u2019s side and to dismiss the petitions.<\/p>\n

Monday\u2019s decision did not resolve the petitions or rule on the substance of the affidavit. It instead narrowed the immediate question to access: who may see the classified material before the court decides its next step.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The High Court of Justice on Monday ordered that the classified affidavit submitted by Brig.-Gen. \u201cG\u201d in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":447754,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[21624,49,3194,16376,42,835,8702,16096,43,99765,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-447753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-attorney-general","tag-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-court","tag-gali-baharav-miara","tag-headlines","tag-high-court-of-justice","tag-justice","tag-mossad","tag-news","tag-roman-gofman","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/447754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}