Top justice official’s ouster angers left, pleases extremist right

Justice Minister Amir Ohana’s firing of his ministry director general is meeting with widespread disapproval — and some support that Ohana probably wishes he weren’t getting.

The Movement for Quality Government, an anti-corruption advocacy group, complains in a statement that Ohana’s ouster of Emi Palmor came during a caretaker government ahead of the September 17 election.

Calling Ohana “drunk on power,” it accuses him of “overstepping his authority” and “forgetting the fact that he’s essentially an acting justice minister.”

The ouster of Palmor “amounts to utter defiance of the instructions of the High Court on this issue, and ignores the fact that Israel is in the middle of an election campaign, and that in two months Ohana may not be justice minister.”

Blue and White lashes Ohana for the “disproportionate damage” he’s doing as an interim minister. Palmor’s ouster shows “just how cynical Netanyahu’s emissaries have become. Netanyahu cares only about himself, his people care only about his immunity, and it’s left to us to care about the future of the country.”

Blue and White’s MK Pnina Tamano-Shata tells Ohana “it’s your loss,” and calls Palmor “an extraordinary director general, a professional, and a true and serious public servant.”

Meretz’s MK Michal Rozin slams the move as “a callous overstep of the authority of a caretaker government” that “smells very bad, as if it is intended to frighten the public service.”

Ehud Barak’s Israel Democratic Party calls the move “another step in the complete dismantling of the democratic system. A democracy requires gatekeepers, and Palmor was one of the best.”

But Ohana can take some comfort, perhaps, from the support he’s gotten from one end of the political spectrum: the extremist Otzma Yehudit faction.

The fringe party’s Itamar Ben-Gvir calls his decision “important and brave…. The Israeli left has to realize that the right is in power — that’s democracy.”