AG tells High Court that government’s move to fire her was ‘totally invalid’

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara backed the petitions against her dismissal on Sunday, telling the High Court that the entire process of firing her was “invalid.”

“The government changed the rules for ending the term of an attorney general, after it had already begun termination proceedings, in order to ensure its outcome,” wrote Baharav-Miara of the government’s decision to pass a resolution allowing it to establish its own ministerial committee to recommend she be fired, rather than pursue the existing legal path.

“The termination process is totally invalid,” she added.

The government voted unanimously in early August to dismiss Baharav-Miara from office, following months of confrontations with her, in a decision that had deep legal and political reverberations and was seen as part of the government’s long-running effort to weaken the judiciary.

Baharav-Miara has maintained that the way in which she was fired was unlawful, and vowed in the immediate aftermath of the vote that she would remain faithful to the law and continue to act professionally and honestly.

The High Court, meanwhile, issued an immediate temporary injunction to freeze the government’s decision, which it later turned into an interim order that will remain in effect until the justices hear petitions for and against her dismissal and rule in one direction or another.

In the meantime, it said the government had to continue to work with the attorney general as normal, and that all her legal positions and opinions remained in effect.

Despite the High Court ruling, the government has continued to snub Baharav-Miara in various ways, from Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi instructing his ministry’s employees to ignore her instructions, to Justice Minister Yariv Levin having his driver change the locks on their shared office in Tel Aviv.

The two men have continued to test the boundaries of the High Court’s interim order, and the Kan public broadcaster reported on Sunday that during the weekly cabinet meeting, they suggested that the government should simply ignore the High Court on the issue altogether.

According to the report, the suggestion came after the government was presented with a list of the latest legal opinions issued by the attorney general, as is standard at each cabinet meeting.

This time, however, the report said, Karhi inquired as to why the opinions of the “former attorney general are being shared here,” and questioned “if they hold any significance.”

Levin was said to have followed up Karhi’s remarks by suggesting that “if she [Baharav-Miara] has signed these opinions, we really don’t need to hand them out here.”

“If we impeach her and then share her opinions, we are emasculating ourselves,” Karhi reportedly added.

Levin’s comments in particular appeared to be “in direct contravention” of the High Court’s ruling that the attorney general’s opinions must be respected as normal, the report noted.

The government has been trying to fire Baharav-Miara since March 2025, when it initiated the dismissal process by seeking the recommendation of the professional committee that was used to appoint her in 2022, in keeping with the terms of a cabinet resolution on the matter passed in 2000.

But in June, after failing to staff that committee with a former justice minister or attorney general as required under the original process, the cabinet passed a new resolution replacing the entire professional committee with a political panel comprised of five cabinet ministers to consider and then make the recommendation to oust her.

Several liberal government watchdog groups petitioned the High Court against the change, saying it amounted to moving the goalposts after the dismissal process had already begun, and that it contravened the Shamgar Committee recommendations from 1998, which determined that the hiring and firing of an attorney general must be done in a politically neutral manner.