Justice minister urges government to ignore court annulment of attorney general’s sacking

Justice Minister Yariv Levin calls on the government to ignore the High Court ruling’s invalidating the government’s dismissal of Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, a step that would lead to a major constitutional crisis.

“The government must totally reject this unlawful intervention into its authority, and insist on its right to work with an attorney general it trusts to help it realize its policies,” fumes the justice minister in a statement to the press.

“There is no court in the world” that would force a government to work with an attorney general it does not trust and whom it unanimously fired,” continues Levin.

“If anyone thought that the High Court had conservative judges, this morning’s ruling proves once again that there are [only] activists and extreme activists on the court,” he writes. The seven-member panel that struck down the government’s dismissal of the attorney general consisted of four justices widely perceived to be conservatives, including the court’s two most hardline advocates of judicial restraint.

Levin also insinuates that the High Court justices are involved in a conspiracy to obfuscate the criminal investigation into the Sde Teiman video leak affair, and tacitly alleges, not for the first time, that Baharav-Miara played a role in that scandal,.

“A heavy cloud hangs over the attorney general,” he charges, in reference to the affair regarding leaked footage of soldiers allegedly abusing a Palestinian detainee, which led to the military’s top legal official being pushed out of office earlier this year.