The Im Tirtzu organization sent a letter on Tuesday to the Civil Service Commissioner, Rabbi Professor Daniel Hershkowitz, calling to open disciplinary proceedings against State Attorney Shai Nitzan for allegedly violating the law.

Im Tirtzu’s demand came in response to a controversial letter sent by Nitzan last month, in which he called on former and current members of the justice system to defend the judiciary in the media.

Among the recipients of the letter were four sitting judges, including one Supreme Court justice and two Jerusalem district court judges who could potentially rule on Prime Minister Netanyahu’s indictment.

In the letter, Nitzan wrote that he would provide anyone willing to defend the judiciary with “information relevant to public discourse about the prosecution in real time. We’ve done this before here and there, but we intend to now do it more frequently.”

Although Nitzan said that he sent the letter to the sitting judges my mistake, Im Tirtzu’s Legal Division contended that it is a flagrant violation of section 17 of the Civil Service Law, which states that it is a disciplinary offense for civil servants to act in a way that harms the public trust in the civil service.

“There cannot be a situation in which sitting judges are receiving unofficial communication from the attorneys in charge of the prosecution,” wrote Im Tirtzu in the letter.

Im Tirtzu’s letter also noted that both the attorney and judge who exchanged unofficial text messages in last year’s “text-message affair” pertaining to the Netanyahu investigations were subjected to disciplinary actions.

“There is something rotten in the way the judiciary handled the Netanyahu investigations,” said Im Tirtzu’s legal counsel Attorney Ziv Maor.

“Unofficial communication between the State Attorney and sitting judges is not something that can be glossed over, and the fact that the Attorney General is doing exactly that shows how deep the problem with the justice system is.”

Maor continued: “A state in which the defendant has to worry that the judge is friends with the prosecutor is a state that lacks trust in the justice system, and we cannot allow that. If the Attorney General doesn’t understand this, we hope that Rabbi Prof. Hershkowitz will help him understand.”

Click here to read the letter sent to the Civil Service Commissioner.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)