legal advisor<\/a>, entrusted with implementing cabinet policies and appointments while maintaining an absolute monopoly over the government\u2019s representation before the courts would diligently serve its \u201cclient\u201d in good faith, loyalty and unshakeable determination.<\/p>\nIndeed, wouldn\u2019t that be the minimum requirement of any competent individual filling this position? And if, in all good conscience, such an official felt unable to perform his duties as demanded, wouldn\u2019t the responsible reaction be simply to resign the position?<\/p>\n
That is precisely what happened during former President Richard Nixon\u2019s notorious \u201cSaturday Night Massacre,\u201d when both the U.S. attorney general and his deputy resigned after refusing to dismiss the special prosecutor appointed to investigate the burgeoning Watergate scandal.<\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s current Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, however, sees things differently. Whenever she deems that the government strays from the path (i.e., in any way contrary to her professional opinion), not only does she refuse to represent the administration when challenged in court, but often aligns herself with those seeking judicial intervention against the very government she is meant to advise.<\/p>\n
Far from fulfilling the role of legal advisor to the government, in practice, Baharav-Miara has effectively become the most prominent leader of the opposition, eclipsing even the most combative politicians, who can only watch her confrontational posture with envy.<\/p>\n
So, too, in her public pronouncements, Baharav-Miara is wont to level scathing attacks against those she is purported to represent. \u201cAs the current Knesset\u2019s term reaches its end, the government has launched a race to dismantle the democratic institutions,\u201d she ominously warned at the recent Israel Bar Association annual conference in Eilat.<\/p>\n
And, as the indefatigable standard bearer for every grievance against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet, she simply couldn\u2019t resist adding the purely political jibe: \u201cIt is impossible, from a legal standpoint, to comply with a situation in which, on the one hand, the government increases the burden on those who serve; and on the other hand, the government allows mass draft\u2011dodging\u2014some would even say encourages it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Besides serving as a stalwart opponent to the government\u2019s efforts at judicial reform, Baharav-Miara has made it her personal crusade to refute the propriety of nearly every major appointment decided upon by the government.<\/p>\n
So when petitions were filed before Israel\u2019s Supreme Court against the nomination of Roman Gofman, a major general in the Israel Defense Forces, as the next Mossad chief, Baharav-Miara abandoned any pretense of serving as \u201cLegal Advisor to the Government,\u201d and immediately endorsed the contentions of the self-styled \u201cpublic petitioners.\u201d Sparing no effort to disqualify the government\u2019s right to choose, reports allege that she went so far as to send defamatory materials against Gofman, privately to the chairman of the Senior Appointments Advisory Committee (tasked with vetting candidates for Israel\u2019s most senior public positions), behind the backs of the other three committee members.<\/p>\n
But her antics didn\u2019t stop there. In a disgraceful attempt to buttress her fierce objection to Gofman\u2019s appointment, Baharav-Miara enlisted outgoing Mossad head David Barnea, apparently convincing him (falsely) that the court itself had requested his opinion on the nomination.<\/p>\n
This was all too much for Alex Stein, one of the three Supreme Court justices hearing the petitions, and it\u2019s worth quoting his caustic criticism at length:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe petitions before us concern judicial review of the decision made regarding the integrity of Major General Gofman by the Senior Appointments Advisory Committee\u2014that, and nothing more. Given the question of integrity, the person who is supposed to appoint or not appoint Gofman as head of the Mossad is the Prime Minister of Israel; he\u2014not us. The Prime Minister\u2019s decision on this appointment is the decisive one. The professional aspects of that decision are not entrusted to us, nor to anyone other than the prime minister. For this reason, I reject outright the improper attempt to turn the proceedings before us into a \u2018Gofman trial,\u2019 whose purpose is to determine whether Gofman is fit to head the Mossad.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis attempt is reflected, for example, in the submission of the outgoing Mossad director\u2019s letter, in which he expressed his view on Gofman\u2019s suitability to lead the organization; and I must admit that I found it extremely difficult to understand the position of the Attorney General, who believed that reviewing this opinion would assist us in judicial review of the committee\u2019s decision regarding Gofman.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stein went on to demolish the perverse assertion that the committee chairman\u2019s minority opinion should be preferred over that of the majority opinion by the other three committee members. According to Baharav-Miara\u2019s twisted reasoning, by virtue of the chairman being retired Supreme Court president Asher Grunis, with \u201cextensive experience as a judge,\u201d his stance on the matter merits special consideration. \u201cThis claim is no claim at all,\u201d Stein acerbically retorted. The government decision establishing the Advisory Committee \u201cdid not grant superior status to minority opinions of those chairing the committee; and we must not invent a \u2018legal rule\u2019 that does not exist in reality or give legitimacy to such a rule.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet even when Grunis later softened his opposition and recommended a deeper review rather than outright rejection, Baharav\u2011Miara urged the court to disregard his revised position and instead adopt his earlier, discarded categorical objection to the nomination.<\/p>\n
To be sure, this is not the first time Baharav-Miara\u2019s obsessive hostility to Netanyahu\u2019s appointments has been stymied by the Supreme Court. When the cabinet decided on a temporary assignment (for all of three months!) of a senior law-school lecturer to chair Israel\u2019s Second Authority commercial broadcasting regulatory body, she again sided with the petitioners against the government, while refusing to allow the communications minister responsible for the appointment to be represented before the court by his own independent counsel.<\/p>\n
Not only did the court\u2019s majority reject her contentions against the appointment but also sharply rebuked her, denying the communication minister\u2019s request to be heard via independent representation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI turned it over and over, and yet could not find a solid legal basis for establishing such a standard [as argued by the Attorney General],\u201d wrote Justice Noam Solberg. \u201cI was not convinced that these references contain a basis, or even a mention, to this standard. Where we are dealing with such a sensitive issue, I believe that it is better to tread on as solid ground as possible. And as for the rest\u2014go and learn.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite these repeated confrontations\u2014the kind no administration should be forced to endure from its own Legal Advisor\u2014an expanded panel of seven Supreme Court justices (including aforementioned Noam Solberg and Alex Stein) unanimously overturned the cabinet\u2019s decision to dismiss Baharav-Miara on account of its total lack of confidence in her ability to fulfill her duties faithfully, judiciously and effectively.<\/p>\n
Such is the sorrowful State of Israel\u2019s contorted legal system today. The electorate can choose who it wants to lead the country, but all too often, the real governing is subject to the whims of the ruling administrative elite.<\/p>\n
Baharav-Miara has another two years in her tenure. Should a right-wing administration prevail in the upcoming elections, we can be certain she will do her utmost to continue serving proudly as the most influential figure in the opposition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Jun. 7, 2026 \/ JNS) The official title of Israel\u2019s attorney general is \u201clegal advisor to the government,\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":481108,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":["post-481107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481107","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=481107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481107\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/481108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}