Israel's government has been waiting for its chance to oust Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara for a long time, not patiently but methodically.
For most of its term and all of the war, some minister in Benjamin Netanyahu's government has ranted about her being "a criminal who fabricates cases, attempting to stage a coup against democracy," or that she is profoundly corrupt for "institutionalizing the most extreme incitement [i.e., criticism of the government] and violence imaginable as a legitimate political instrument, when their positions overlap [with hers]."
The government's list of complaints against the attorney general is long. Netanyahu's ruling coalition doesn't like that she has ordered it to comply with High Court of Justice rulings mandating the ultra-Orthodox draft; that she has warned numeroustimes that the government and the prime minister's decision-making processes violate law and proper governing procedures; that she withstood government pressure to crack down on the pro-democracy protests of 2023, and showed no interest in whittling down the corruption cases against Netanyahu, who has chafed at the 2020 conflict of interest deal preventing him from intervening in government appointments or legislation that could influence his trial.
He also didn't like when she ruled that his 2023 move to unilaterally exit the deal was illegal. Surely these have nothing to do with his government's efforts to oust her?
On Wednesday night, a certain someone deemed the timing to be right: Justice Minister Yariv Levin called to begin proceedings leading to her dismissal. His 85-page screed argued that Baharav-Miara has turned the institution "into a tyrannical political branch, actually violent and rampaging at times."
He continued: "She has crushed to dust the principles she claims to advance … in the cynical and dogmatic guise of the 'rule of law,' just like the medieval church purportedly acting 'in the name of God.'" In other words, Israel's attorney general is pretty much the Inquisition.
One of the architects of the judicial coup, MK Simcha Rothman, in the Knesset with Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara last November.Credit: Naama Grynbaum
Some say that authoritarians excel most of all at projecting. Not a day goes by that the current government or its actual theocratic lawmakers haven't sought to execute its actual coup against democratic institutions in Israel (notwithstanding what the country lacks), or openly incite to violence – whether against Gazan civilians, Arab citizens or, yes, the attorney general – for example, by calling her a traitor during wartime.
The process for dismissing the attorney general takes some time. It isn't happening tomorrow, and it's not certain whether it will happen at all. But Levin's request is a major step, if less than a surprise. The following points are important to know and watch in the weeks ahead.
First, the judicial coup that roiled Israel before October 7 never went away, and it's back with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. For a brief phase early in the war, the specific efforts to attack the judiciary directly were suspended. Instead, the government passed a slew of emergency laws immediately following the Hamas attack and the declaration of war hacking away at human rights; continued to stack the civil service with political loyalists; pass laws to gut nongovernmental organizations supporting human rights and critical of government policies; ban media outlets; gouge out Palestinian voting rights; extend sovereignty in the West Bank – and so much more.
But all the while, the original judicial assault was creeping back. The justice minister held appointments to the Supreme Court hostage to his desire to reengineer the committee to appoint judges. After failing to do so, he staged a weird boycott of Israel's new Supreme Court president that continues to this day.
The tactic is clear: advance so many authoritarian policies, laws and reforms so thick and fast that you overwhelm any opposition. Character assassination of the whole legal establishment is critical to the capture of the state.
Second, dismissing Baharav-Miara is a new nadir for the executive takeover of the judiciary. Analysts rightfully point out that, in Israel, firing an attorney general is not completely unprecedented – but this wrongfully implies that it's not so bad. In 1986, even The New York Times technically got it wrong: the government didn't truly fire Attorney General Yitzhak Zamir, the now-nonagenarian voice of national conscience, defending law and democracy in Israel. Zamir wanted to get to the bottom of who beat to death two Palestinian bus hijackers who were in the custody of the Shin Bet security service – and who was in on the cover-up (spoiler: the top levels of government).
The iconic photo by Alex Levac at the heart of the so-called Bus 300 affair in Israel.Credit: Alex Levac
But Zamir had already announced his resignation before the investigation got underway. When he refused to drop the case, the cabinet snapped into action to find his replacement. So don't be fooled: outright dismissal is a whole new level of coup.
Third, the government is desperately trying to claim that the attorney general trounces the will of the people who are "suffering" under her yoke. They cite polls. There is a survey from last November from the most openly right-wing, Netanyahu-hugging survey company, asking whether she "should be kept [in her job] in light of disagreements with the government." Fifty-one percent of Israelis said no, while 48 percent said yes. The margin of error was 3.9 percent. A Channel 12 survey on Wednesday also found the population evenly split, with 42 to 41 percent in favor of the government dismissing Baharav-Miara.
Again, don't be fooled. In a January survey by the Institute for National Security Studies, 39 percent of Israelis expressed trust in the attorney general (combining "very much" and "pretty high" trust). This is not a great rating, but the country is in a bad mood overall. On the same measure, the prime minister received 29 percent, the defense minister got 22 percent. Meanwhile, the government was trusted by only about half of those who trusted her: 20 percent. In the same Channel 12 survey from Wednesday that the Netanyahu camp loves to selectively cite,60 percent thought Netanyahu should resign.
The INSS study found deeper and more disturbing trends in the crosstabulations: Among self-defined left-wing Israelis, 83 percent said they trust the attorney general, and 62 percent of the center said likewise – but just 8 percent of the self-defined firm right. Forty-four percent of Haifa residents trust her in total, but just 14 percent of West Bank settlers; 61 percent of secular Jews and just 4 percent of ultra-Orthodox. Finally, 64 percent of older Israelis (65 and up) trust her, but just 27 percent of 18-24-year-olds.
These gaps are extraordinary. They reflect completely opposing worldviews, parallel realities among whole communities; gaps too large to be a fleeting opinion. What kind of social contract can exist between the citizens and their government when there is an irreconcilable split over the sources of legal authority based on the sociocultural fault lines in Israeli life?
Demonstrators protesting against the judicial coup, in Tel Aviv last November.Credit: Tomer Appelbaum
The right loves to argue that such findings prove the leftist-liberal bias of Israel's legal establishment. But average citizens are hard-pressed to judge the attorney general's specific positions or decisions. What they know is that she's a gatekeeper, protecting the people from arbitrary, despotic governance. What right-wing citizens know is that they don't want any gates.
Finally, if Israeli citizens did look closely at her record, they would find that this same attorney general is far from being a far-left activist. Amit Becher, head of the Israel Bar Association, reminded Israelis in a radio interview that she approves the vast majorityof this government's actions.
Those actions include the war against Palestinians. On her watch, the government passed emergency regulations allowing draconian terms of detention for Palestinians, which deteriorated into deplorable conditions, prisoner abuse and refusal to grant the Red Cross access to detainees. When the government shuttered Al Jazeera in Israel, she approved the law.
Israeli soldiers entering Al Jazeera's office in Ramallah to issue a 45-day closure order last September.Credit: Al Jazeera/AFP
Adam Shinar, professor of constitutional law at Reichman University, told me "she gave a blank check for everything in this war." He noted that she had "dragged her feet" in the investigation against vicious abuses of Palestinian prisoners in Sde Teiman, and approved banning journalists from entering Gaza. One could add the government's unprecedented persecution of Arab citizens in Israel for political _expression_ and frantic policies of Palestinian expulsions in the West Bank. "Did she oppose anything?" asked Shinar rhetorically.
But some gatekeeper is better than none. If Israel's government ends up with even fewer constraints than it has today, neither Palestinians nor Israelis will escape its tyrannical rule.