Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar excoriated Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara during a cabinet meeting on Tuesday evening.

This is not the first time that Sa’ar, who appointed Baharav-Miara as Attorney General during his term as Justice Minister in the previous government, has publicly criticized her. His latest accusations come after Baharav-Miara again flagrantly violated the authority of her position in recent days, including telling Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that it is “illegal” for him to even convene a meeting to discuss firing Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar. Her order was so outrageous that it was even criticized by Supreme Court justices who wrote in a ruling against petitions by left-wing organizations on the matter that any petitions “must wait for a final decision of the government, which is the authorized body, and only then can the path be opened for them to subject the decision to judicial review.”

Baharav-Miara again issued an outrageous order on Tuesday, sending a letter to Netanyahu that it is “illegal” for him to re-appoint Otzma Yehudit chairman Itamar Ben-Gvir, who returned to the government on Tuesday, as the national security minister. The government ignored her order and unanimously voted on Tuesday to reappoint him to his position.

Sa’ar stated: “I started working in the Attorney General’s Office 30 years ago and later, I worked in the State Attorney’s Office and since then, for many years, I worked as the Cabinet Secretary and as a minister with various legal advisors.”

“I participated twice in the appointment of the Attorney General – once as the Knesset representative on the committee and a second time as the Justice Minister in the previous government. There was nothing like this. Not even close to this. In trying to find a suitable image for the Attorney General’s conduct in her eagerness to harm the government, I remembered the kamikaze pilots in World War II who committed suicide on enemy targets.”

“What is happening before our eyes is the destruction of the government’s legal advice in an attempt to harm the government. What reason did the Attorney General find to prevent this appointment [Ben-Gvir]?  After all, even the reason for not appointing him due to the filing of an indictment also expresses an activist approach in light of the explicit wording of the law. Now, there’s not even an indictment. There is probably a new reason: לבלט״ב – an acronym for לא בא לה טוב בעיניים – she doesn’t agree with it,” Sa’ar sardonically noted.

Sa’ar then cited a previous case in which a Supreme Court justice ruled that the court cannot interfere in the election of a minister except under “exceptional and extreme circumstances.”

“Where are those extreme circumstances here?” Sa’ar questioned. “Where do they exist?”

Sa’ar also attacked Baharav-Miara’s interference in the decision to oust the Shin Bet chief: “The Supreme Court ruled that there is no place for granting interim orders for petitions on the matter. So if the court did not issue an interim order against the appointment – are you seeking to prevent the appointment? How is this possible? I hope the court will wisely refrain from sliding to the place you are trying to bring it.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)