Ministers rage at ‘anarchist’ AG, with one implying she’s trying to ‘kill’ Netanyahu
After flares fired at PM’s home, his allies accuse Baharav-Miara of inaction against anti-government violence; Karhi is slammed for invoking Jewish saying about attempted murder
Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara faced renewed calls for her dismissal on Sunday as members of the government attacked her for perceived leniency toward anti-government protesters, after flares were fired the previous evening in the vicinity of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s private residence in Caesarea.
The calls for her ousting also came on the heels of her opposition to a government proposal to regulate retirement packages for government legal advisers and compel those who have served more than seven years to retire before the end of 2024. A legal opinion published by the Attorney General’s Office on Sunday warned that such a move could be intended to remove officials who act “as gatekeepers” due to “foreign” considerations.
In an incendiary post on X, Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, who has clashed with Baharav-Miara in the past, called for her to be fired while invoking principles of Jewish law associated with attempted murder to justify his position.
Accusing the embattled attorney general of failing to tackle violence and incitement from anti-government protesters, Karhi alleged that Baharav-Miara was “sitting with her arms crossed, granting them legitimacy and refusing to stop this dangerous deterioration.”
Her perceived failure to act against the “lawlessness” of anti-government protesters was bringing Israel “closer by leaps and bounds to disaster — the assassination of the prime minister,” Karhi added.
Three prominent anti-government protesters were arrested overnight in connection to the firing of flares at Netanyahu’s residence.
“The attorney general must go home today,” Karhi reiterated. “If someone comes to kill you — including through weakness and agreement through silence — rise up and fire them,” he said, paraphrasing a line from the Talmud about self-defense: “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill them first.”
Karhi’s words were met with outrage from opposition lawmakers, including Opposition Leader Yair Lapid who accused the communications minister of “openly inciting murder against the attorney general,” and called for him to be fired.
The Movement for Quality Government in Israel accused Karhi of “crossing a dangerous red line” and warned that his statement was “serious incitement against the gatekeepers of Israeli democracy.”
The watchdog called on Netanyahu to condemn Karhi’s “violent and dangerous rhetoric.”
Diaspora Affairs Minister Amihai Chikli similarly slammed Baharav-Miara, claiming that she was preventing the rule of law from being implemented equally across Israeli society.
In a post on X, Chikli demanded the “immediate impeachment” of the attorney general, who he said has caused “unprecedented damage to the rule of law and public order.”
“In her serial disregard of wild incitement, she is a silent accomplice,” Chikli wrote, adding that “the State of Israel cannot afford to have an anarchist in the post of legal adviser.”
Meanwhile, in an interview with the Haredi Kikar HaShabbat news outlet, Regional Cooperation Minister David Amsalem claimed that the anti-government protesters had illegally acquired the flares thrown at Netanyahu’s home “under the auspices of Miara.”
“The next step will be a light missile, or maybe a mortar,” the firebrand lawmaker posited.
“She is essentially the most dangerous person to the State of Israel,” Amsalem continued. “She allows the left to run wild, to do whatever it wants. She gets in our way in the government. She’s forbidden almost 50, 60, 70 decisions — including laws. She calls herself the law.”
The vitriol against Baharav-Miara spilled over from social media and into the government’s weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday as well, following the attorney general’s opposition to the move that would cap the term limit of a government legal adviser at seven years.
According to the Kan public broadcaster, the move being discussed would pave the way for the ouster of seven ministerial advisers, among them Finance Ministry Legal Adviser Asi Messing, who has clashed with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
Other legal advisers who would find themselves out of a job by the end of 2024 include those in the welfare, education, immigration and absorption, diaspora affairs, agriculture, and social equality ministries.
While the proposal would not impact Baharav-Miara in the immediate future as she entered her post in 2022, cabinet ministers nevertheless took the opportunity to call for her dismissal during a heated debate on the matter.
Amsalem accused the government’s legal advisers of being “gangsters,” while Justice Minister Yariv Levin claimed that they had acted in “breach of trust for 15 years,” by not complying with a 2009 government decision, in line with the findings of the inter-ministerial Abramovich Commission, to limit their terms to seven years; it was never implemented.
Netanyahu has served as prime minister since the time of the Abramovich Commission, with the exception of a short-lived power-sharing government headed by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid from June 2021 to December 2022.
Meanwhile, far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir took the opportunity to air his oft-uttered grievances about the attorney general, and agreed with Levin that the conduct of the legal advisers was “illegal.”
“But,” he continued, “you are missing the point — the legal counsel has declared war on the government.”
“You can see it in the handling of the incitement against the prime minister, the abject incompetence in the conduct of the [Eli] Feldstein case, and in fact in everything they have accused us of,” he said. “Pay attention, my fellow ministers, to what they are asking the prime minister to fire me for: because I backed our soldiers, because I spoke against [Hadash-Ta’al MKs] Ahmad Tibi and Ofer Cassif, because I criticized the courts.”
“Today, it’s me; tomorrow, it’s the prime minister,” Ben Gvir claimed.
The attorney general told Netanyahu last week that Ben Gvir’s tenure must be reevaluated in light of his repeated and ongoing interventions into operation police matters and his politicization of police promotions, and not, as Ben Gvir suggested, because he had “backed our soldiers.”
Netanyahu himself described Baharav-Miara’s conduct as “combative” during a cabinet meeting earlier this month, and asked Levin to come up with a “solution” to deal with her, prompting outrage.
His office later attempted to walk back his comments somewhat, saying that the attorney general’s role is to “assist the government in implementing the government’s decisions and promoting bills on its behalf, and not the other way around.”
Lazar Berman contributed to this report.
