AG asks High Court to strike down Roman Gofman’s appointment as Mossad director

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara endorses petitions against the appointment of Maj. Gen. Roman Gofman as the next director of the Mossad intelligence agency, telling the High Court that the appointment “suffers from extreme and glaring unreasonableness.”

The appointment of Gofman, who has been serving as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s military secretary, was greenlit last month by the Senior Appointments Advisory Committee.

In a lengthy filing, Baharav-Miara points to three flaws in the committee’s ruling. She says the three committee members who supported Gofman’s appointment did so before reviewing the dissenting opinion of committee head Asher Grunis, and that two members were kept from seeing classified documents.

She adds that Ori Elmakayes, who, as a teenager, was allegedly used by Gofman for an “influence campaign,” was not allowed to appear in front of the committee.

Elmakayes and Telem–the Movement for Integrity in Government, filed the petitions against Gofman, which focused on his choice to use Elmakayes, then 17, in an Arabic-language influence campaign.

As a result of Gofman’s actions, Elmakayes was detained and interrogated by the Shin Bet domestic security agency, held in isolation for two months, charged with espionage offenses, and detained for 18 months before the charges were dropped.

“The committee did not conduct a sufficient or exhaustive factual inquiry,” writes Baharav-Miara, “and its decision appears to be deficient in a manner that undermines the integrity-related aspects of the matter, including the prime minister’s ability to rely upon it in deciding to appoint Gofman as head of the Mossad.”

This alone, she says, “is enough to justify canceling the prime minister’s decision.”

The case’s “integrity defects,” she adds, “go to the root of the appointment to the position of head of the Mossad.”

The Elmakayes affair, she writes “casts a heavy shadow over Gofman’s integrity and, by extension, over his appointment to the position of head of the Mossad.”

The appointment, therefore, “suffers from extreme and glaring unreasonableness, cannot stand legally, and must be annulled,” she writes.

She adds that current Mossad chief David Barnea sent a confidential letter to be forwarded to the court related to the petitions.