Israel’s most right-wing coalition in history has proven also to be one of its most impotent, at least when it comes to achieving even the slightest reform of Israel’s warped and despotic legal system.
Does anyone remember the sweeping judicial overhaul we were promised back when the government was first sworn in, just a few years ago? Everything was supposed to change for the better, but things have only gotten worse. Not only has the government failed miserably at curbing the judiciary’s control over the legislative process, public policy, and official appointments and dismissals, but Israel’s Supreme Court has assumed authorities never before imagined.
A most recent case in point: A panel of seven justices ruled unanimously to strike down the Cabinet’s decision to dismiss Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, declaring the act null and void. The pretext proffered for the court’s verdict was that the government did not abide by its own mechanism established for dismissing the AG (who in Hebrew is officially titled the legal adviser to the government).
The reference is to Government Resolution 2274, which was adopted more than a quarter of a century ago, ratifying the findings and recommendations of the Shamgar Commission.
In the wake of the ignominious Bar-On‒Hebron fiasco of 1997, during Benjamin Netanyahu’s first term as prime minister, the government was compelled to convene a formal commission headed by former Supreme Court President Meir Shamgar. Its official mandate: to codify the proper procedure for appointing the attorney general, clarify his/her official functions, and lay down specific criteria for removal from office.
In a prime example of never letting a crisis go unexploited, the commission determined that the government would no longer be allowed to choose its own legal adviser, but rather a professional-public nomination committee, led naturally by a retired Supreme Court justice, would henceforth be endowed with such authority.
As for terminating the AG’s term of office, Section 26 of Resolution 2274 declared that the Minister of Justice must first present to the committee the proposed justifications for such a decision, including:
(1) Substantial and prolonged differences of opinion between the government and the AG, to the extent that prevents effective cooperation.
(2) The AG has committed an act that is inappropriate for his position.
(3) The AG is no longer qualified to perform his duties.
(4) A criminal investigation is initiated, or an indictment has been filed against the AG.
Following that, the committee will allow the attorney general to appear before it and present his opinion, and only then submit its conclusions to the government in writing.
Two-and-a-half decades later, the current government declared that in this regard, it is not obligated by the decisions of its predecessors. In June 2025, the Cabinet resolved to amend the mechanism for terminating the AG’s service.
In place of the previous professional-public committee, Resolution 3306 established a “ministerial committee” consisting solely of Cabinet members tasked with reviewing the matter and proposing their recommendations to the government.
When this newly formed body repeatedly summoned the incumbent attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara, to present her arguments contesting her dismissal, she simply refused to appear. Based on a vast compilation of finely detailed aggrievances, therefore, the government decided to immediately terminate this public official, as adopted in its Resolution 3306 from Aug. 4:
“1. Between the Legal Adviser to the Government, Attorney Gali Baharav-Miara, and the government, there exist significant and prolonged differences of opinion which create a situation that prevents effective cooperation.
2. The Government has no confidence in Attorney Gali Baharav-Miara as Legal Adviser to the Government, and her continued tenure in the position seriously harms the work of the government.”
In no time at all, a slew of petitions were submitted before Israel’s High Court of Justice by an array of “public petitioners” decrying the government’s actions as yet another “unprecedented” affront to the rule of law, an attack against “the most important gatekeepers,” and a grave assault on Israel’s teetering democracy.
Unsurprisingly, the Supreme Court readily complied and on the very day of its adoption, deputy president Noam Solberg issued an interim order preventing the dismissal resolution from entering into effect, further declaring that “no change will occur in the authorities of the Legal Advisor to the Government and the working arrangements between her and the government, nor shall she be replaced [until issuance of a further ruling].”
Even less surprising is the fact that the High Court of Justice has now rendered its final verdict on the matter, decisively overturning the administration’s attempt to dismiss the AG, and disqualifying its efforts to alter the mechanism by which the government can remove its Legal Advisor from office.
What may nevertheless raise a proverbial eyebrow is the particular members of this expanded seven-justice panel, which voted unanimously to accept the petitions and overturn the government’s decision to dismiss its legal adviser.
Despite four of these judges oftentimes labeled by mistake as “conservative,” they all dutifully fell in line behind the fictitiously installed Supreme Court “president,” Yithak Amit, and his sole opinion.
Certainly one of the most unqualified individuals ever to aspire to serve as Chief Justice, let alone usurp such a position by grossly illegal means, Amit threw judicial temperament to the wind and let free his unbridled contempt for Israeli Justice Minister Yariv Levin and the rest of the cabinet ministers. Scolding them as undisciplined schoolchildren, he concluded with the stern-faced warning, “We note that what emerges from them is gravely disturbing. The rule of law does not exempt any individual, nor state authorities and its organizations.” Good to know.
At the most basic level, the court ruled that neither the grounds nor the procedure properly met its self-determined standards for dismissing the AG, whereas the mechanism designed by the Shamgar Commission was thereby the only “honorable way” to effect such a change in personnel. In more candid terms, this was nothing but another instance of judicial paternalism, not to mention disdain, suspicion and hostility.
The court couldn’t resist fining the government 90,000 shekels in legal expenses for the petitioners. Nor did the judges seem to note the acute irony in condoning the office of the legal adviser to the government’s refusal to represent the government ministers themselves. Could there be any starker example of derision and insubordination by an official agency towards its government employer?
Amit’s deceitful cynicism rose to new heights when he waxed loftily on the importance of “ensuring that the attorney general, as a gatekeeper, can exercise his powers and duties as a professional, competent, and independent entity who is not subject in the performance of his powers and duties to the authority of the executive branch.”
When speaking of this particularly unscrupulous public official, any talk of her hallowed “gatekeeper” status is the most transparently dishonest charade a Supreme Court justice could ever propose.
It is by now beyond question that the current attorney general is a mere hairsbreadth away from being interrogated for her deep involvement in the recent MAG scandal perpetrated with her close companion, Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi. Indeed, the only impediment to conducting a full-blown criminal investigation into this national travesty is the intense opposition Baharav-Miara herself is advocating, with the full support of her cronies on the Supreme Court.
There is much to be learned from this latest episode in the annals of Israel’s legal system. Unfortunately, most of the lessons demonstrate yet again how the government doesn’t seem to have the slightest clue how to set things right.
As Levin wryly quipped, this decision amply proves once and for all that there are no conservative judges on the bench, but rather only “activists and extremist activists.” Well, whose fault is that?
