In growing spat over Haredi daycare subsidies, cabinet secretary accuses AG of leading to ‘total anarchy’

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara attends a farewell ceremony in honor of outgoing police commissioner Kobi Shabtai at the National Police Academy in Beit Shemesh, July 14, 2024. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)
Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara attends a farewell ceremony in honor of outgoing police commissioner Kobi Shabtai at the National Police Academy in Beit Shemesh, July 14, 2024. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs accuses the office of Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara of putting itself above the government and leading the country to “total anarchy,” after one of Baharav-Miara’s deputies accused him today of acting without legal authority to force the treasury to prepare to subsidize daycares for the families of ultra-Orthodox draft evaders.

The attorney general, who also serves as legal adviser to the government, has said she opposes a bill being advanced by the government to enable the daycare subsidies despite a ruling that deems them illegal if a parent doesn’t serve in the military despite being legally required to do so.

“There is no such thing in Israeli law as an ‘attorney general instruction’ to not implement a cabinet decision,” Fuchs writes. “The legal advisory is acting against the law, without authority, and is threatening in every letter it issues as if it were above the government, a sort of executive authority that everyone is subordinate to.

“Your oppositional conduct against the government since its inception is gradually expanding toward a constitutional crisis and total anarchy.”

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