Netanyahu rails at AG over new legal filing against appointment of new Mossad head

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accuses Attorney General Gali Baharav Miara of seeking to create an “uproar over nothing,” after her office’s submission of new information over the appointment of Maj. Gen. Roman Gofman as the next head of the Mossad.

The accusations are made in a letter from Netanyahu’s attorney to the High Court of Justice, asking it to make the letter filed by the Attorney General’s Office earlier today publicly available.

The Attorney General’s Office filed an update to the court today with information it said was relevant to petitions against Gofman’s appointment, and which it claimed Gofman should have disclosed himself.

After reviewing the information, which was kept confidential, the court determined that it was not pertinent and would not influence its decision.

In a letter to the court, Harel Arnon, the attorney representing Netanyahu, describes the information as “worthless,” claiming Baharav-Miara filed the request “to create an uproar over nothing and to defend her position that the appointment should be canceled.”

Continued Arnon: “A review of the letter reveals that it has one goal: to continue to cast aspersions on Maj. Gen. Gofman, and cause his appointment to be canceled.”

The prime minister’s attorney notes the two incidents mentioned in the attorney general’s update happened before the court hearing and ruling on May 12, which he pointed out the attorney general herself acknowledged.

And he says that the incidents themselves were irrelevant to the deliberations of the Senior Appointments Advisory Committee, which approved Gofman’s candidacy, but whose deliberations have been called into question by the petitions against his appointment.

Arnon also repeats a request that the Senior Appointments Advisory Committee, and not the Attorney General’s Office, take down and submit to the court an affidavit by a military intelligence officer regarding the controversial affair at the heart of petitions against Gofman’s appointment.

“Having the attorney general take the [military intelligence officer’s] affidavit… will not contribute to uncovering the truth but, God forbid, to obstructing it, through misleading wording of the affidavit,” writes the attorney.