Justice Minister Yariv Levin calls on government not to work with ISA chief Ronen Bar if Supreme court cancels his dismissal. ‘You’ll see that he’ll get up and leave.’
Justice Minister Yariv Levin on Saturday evening called for the Israeli government not to cooperate with dismissed ISA chief Ronen Bar if the Supreme Court cancels his dismissal.
In an interview with Channel 14 News, Levin said, “If the Supreme Court invalidates the ISA chief’s dismissal, we need to not cooperate with Ronen Bar, not to work with him. You will see that the ISA chief will get up and leave. This will not last even one week.”
When asked if such a step would be harmful to Israel’s security, Levin said, “I think that such a thing will not last even one week, and you will see that the ISA chief will get up and leave, because that’s what needs to happen.”
“We are very close to deciding the battle, and we must not stop,” he added. “The Attorney General, in the end, will go home, but the process is difficult.”
Slamming the judiciary, he said, “I am willing to be the one who did not appoint a single justice to the Supreme Court. I will not lend a hand to the appointment of people who are not conservative.”
“In the entire world, people receive [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu with a king’s welcome. Only here do they persecute him with such evilness.”
On Friday, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara told the Supreme Court that the government’s decision to end Bar’s term “is wrong from its foundation, tainted with personal conflicts of interest on the part of the Prime Minister due to the criminal investigations into those close to him, and will lead to turning the position into a position of faith.”
She claimed that “this is an unprecedented and unusual decision by the government, made quickly and without meeting the requirements of administrative law and accepted norms regarding the appointment or termination of officials’ terms. This decision has serious consequences for the independence of the ISA and its future functioning, and creates a dangerous precedent in which we may remove heads of security organizations in the middle of their term, due to irrelevant reasons.”
In fact, Baharav-Miara has a clear conflict of interest, due to the fact that her husband is a friend of Bar, and of [former ISA chief] Nadav Argaman. Shalom Arbel, a former ISA official, noted, “Her husband was with them in the same unit, they worked very closely together as a team, and they are among their best friends.”
The law regarding the termination of an ISA chief clearly stipulates that only the government has the authority to appoint or dismiss an ISA chief, and that the government is not required to provide any reason for an ISA chief’s dismissal mid-term.
