Israel’s Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara opposed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pick, IDF Maj. Gen. Roman Gofman, as the next Mossad director in a legal opinion she submitted to the High Court of Justice on Sunday.
Baharav-Miara said there were “substantial flaws” in the decision of the Advisory Committee on Senior Civil Service Appointments, which approved Gofman as the next Mossad chief by a 3-1 majority in April.
Gofman is slated to start in his position on June 2. He will serve for five years.
Several left-wing NGOs petitioned the Supreme Court, sitting as the High Court of Justice, against the appointment, including the Movement for Quality Government in Israel, the Movement for Moral Purity and Forum Homat Magen. Also petitioning against the decision is Ori Elmakayes.
The “Elmakeyes Affair” has taken center stage in the fight over Gofman’s appointment. Elmakayes, a 17-year-old influencer, was recruited by Gofman, then head of the 210th “Bashan” Division in the IDF Northern Command, for an Arabic-language influence campaign.
Elmakeyes was fed classified information, which he then publicized on the internet. He was arrested and charged with espionage by the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) and held in isolation for two months. When it was discovered he was working for the IDF, the indictment was dropped in January 2024.
Critics say Gofman should be disqualified as he didn’t receive permission to carry out his influence campaign, which compromises his integrity. Elmakeyes blames Gofman for “disavowing” him, leaving him to face prison alone.
“There is no dispute that Gofman was aware of the operation of an Israeli citizen by the division; that he gave his approval for the actual operation; and that Gofman and the division were not authorized to carry out this activity without permission,” the attorney general wrote in her opinion.
”]The Affair] casts a heavy shadow over Goffman’s integrity, and in any case on his appointment as head of the Mossad,” she said.
In opposing the appointment, Baharav-Miara placed the Advisory Committee’s one dissenting voice, Asher Grunis, chairman of the committee and a former Supreme Court president, ahead of the committee’s majority, including, Daniel Herskowitz, former head of the Israel Civil Service Commission; Talia Einhorn, a law professor at Ariel University; and Moshe Tery, former chairman of the Israel Securities Authority.
On May 7, Hershkovitz, Einhorn and Tery submitted their own response to the court requesting that the petitions be rejected. They said they had thoroughly examined all the allegations against Gofman, heard from a number of senior officials, including the IDF chief of staff and the outgoing head of the Mossad, and concluded Gofman acted with integrity.
They said that after reviewing all the classified materials, their opinion was “even strengthened” that they should not disqualify Gofman.
The three sharply criticized the petitioners’ arguments that “tried to mislead” the court that Grunis’s opinion is somehow decisive. Committee decisions are made by a regular majority, just as they are in courts, they said.
Netanyahu, in his response to the High Court on May 8, made the same argument, saying that committee decisions are made by a majority vote and the chairman is not given veto power. He said the petitions should be rejected immediately.
Gofman, through his attorney, submitted his own response the same day, asserting that the petitioners were seeking to “replace the democratic system of government” by taking from the elected prime minister the responsibility for the management of the state’s security and placing it in the hands of the High Court.
Gofman also highlighted his 30 years of distinguished service in the Israel Defense Forces and his valor on Oct. 7, 2023, during the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel. (Upon learning of the attack, Gofman drove south from his home in Ashdod, engaged the enemy, killing some until he was seriously wounded.)
Coalition members expressed opposition to the attorney general’s position. Likud Knesset member Ofir Katz dubbed Baharav-Miara, who has opposed many government decisions even though her position requires her to represent the government, as “the opposition leader.”
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich similarly wrote on Sunday: “Gali Baharav-Miara has seen herself for a long time as an inseparable part of the opposition to the government. And the fact that High Court justices are forcing the government to continue her tenure, in complete contradiction to the law and common sense, and enabling her to continue to sabotage the government’s work and harm the state and the citizens of Israel, is a terrible corruption of the court.”
On Aug. 4, 2025, the Cabinet voted unanimously to fire Baharav-Miara. She appealed and the Supreme Court overruled the government’s decision on Dec. 14, 2025.
Israel’s governing coalition has been at odds with the attorney general since its formation in 2022. The adversarial relationship sharpened after the government’s attempt to reform the judicial system in 2023, which would have curtailed the attorney general’s powers.
