Cabinet secretary accuses AG of ‘coup’ over opposition to gov’t efforts to exempt Haredim from IDF service

Jeremy Sharon is The Times of Israel’s legal affairs and settlements reporter

Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs arrives for a meeting with families of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, as well as Israelis who were released from the terror group's captivity, in Herzliya, on December 5, 2023. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)
Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs arrives for a meeting with families of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, as well as Israelis who were released from the terror group's captivity, in Herzliya, on December 5, 2023. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)

Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs assails Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara in a note to the High Court of Justice, accusing her of carrying out an “administrative coup” in her handling of the government’s stance regarding petitions demanding the conscription of ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students.

Fuch’s comments come after the Attorney General’s Office upbraided the government on Wednesday for having passed a decision asserting that the Defense Ministry, the Education Ministry and the IDF can have private counsel representation in the High Court for the government’s position that it can continue to fund ultra-Orthodox yeshivas and not draft ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students, in direct opposition to the attorney general’s position.

“The attorney general is carrying out an administrative coup, unfounded and unprecedented in Israel and in any other country in the world,” Fuchs writes in his note to the High Court, Ynet reports.

Fuchs accused the Attorney General’s Office of trying to replace the government and unjustly separating the government from its ministries by allowing the government to obtain private counsel in the Haredi conscription and yeshiva funding petitions but not the ministries that implement those policies.

On Wednesday, Deputy Attorney General Gil Limon said the government’s attempt to secure private counsel for those agencies was an attempt to circumvent the attorney general’s position that yeshiva funding must be halted and efforts made to draft ultra-Orthodox men into the army after the legal framework enabling the previous policies expired at the end of June 2023 and March 2024.

War cabinet minister and head of the National Unity party Benny Gantz replies to Fuch’s broadside, strongly criticizing him by saying “the cabinet secretary surely knows that in the State of Israel, the government is not above the law, and never will be.”

Gantz also takes a swipe at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over his efforts to persist with funding Haredi yeshivas and not drafting Haredi men into the army, saying he is sure the court will not accept the government’s position “which the prime minister is leading [and] which lacks national responsibility.”

Gantz adds: “All of this is due to the political need to bring about a draft evasion law which will harm the security of the state and its resilience during a time of war.”

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