In the case of the Army's Chief Prosecutor, who admitted to lying to the High Court and may have done other things, there is an obvious need for an investigation. However all the prosecuting bodies signed off on her lies. At the least they will have to testify about the events, and also some may be implicated in the crimes, and thus have a clear lack of objectivity. Nonetheless, the Government Attorney General has refused to recuse herself from involvement in the investigation. The Minister of Justice pointed out her conflicts of interest and moved to appoint an outside investigator. The Attorney General refused to back out and the case was heard by the Israel High Court. The High Court basically sided with the Minister of Justice, and the media were shocked.
A heavy calamity landed upon the Israeli Leftist camp. "Democracies die slowly," the veteran columnist, Nachum Barnea, wrote, quoting the present president of the High Court, Yitzhak Amit, when he decided, two years ago, to put an end to the government's abolishment of nullifying the "reasonableness criterion."
"The judges shut their eyes, refusing to see the whole picture," bemoans Barnea the High Court's decision this week. "Yariv Levine is not interested in who should supervise the investigation of the Chief Prosecutor, in lieu of the objective: the battle to do away with the judicial system."
To be sure, the voice of the extreme Left newspaper, Ha'aretz, doubly eulogizes this in its editorial: "It is difficult to find an explanation for the Court's decision. But whether it is out of naivete, in a disgusting attempt, engendered by fear to appease the minister, or G-d forbid, to provide backing to the revolution of the police from being a stronghold of the rule of the law — the result is bad and replete with devastating repercussions.
All knights of the rule of the law and those who kowtow to the 'Molech' idolatry of the Judicial were aghast at the High Court's decision to allow Minister Levine to decide whom to appoint to lead the inquiry. In their view, it is similar to pounding a nail in the coffin of Israeli democracy, for it is absurd that the minister who is to blame be responsible for appointing the one to lead the inquiry, even though the law explicitly endows him with this very authority. But the Court has long since proven that it is the one who determines the law and not the Rule Book of Laws, so that in this instance, it "should" have been the body to appoint the one to lead the investigation, rather than allow the existence of this law which, lo and behold, does actually authorize the Minister to deal with it
Nonetheless the Court did, indeed, issue clear requirements for the one who is supposed to investigate the affair. He is expected to be an accepted professional figure in the area of investigations, an outstanding judicial figure who dealt with criminal investigations, and without any political involvements.
Nevertheless, the very fact that the High Court allocated authority to an elected minister, a public representative operating by virtue of his public mandate and of the law, is a virtual collapse of democracy. In their eyes, democracy is equivalent to the rule of those non-mandated by the public in the High Court rather than by the rule of elected bodies. And if there be such judges in the judicial system who fail to understand this, they must be put in their place, according to the views of the Israeli Left.
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All adherents of the Left, infected with a lack of objectivity, find it difficult to point an accusing finger at the Legal Advisor who stubbornly refused to withdraw from the investigation and forced the Court to intervene in this matter. A chief judicial expert, Professor of Law, Yuval Elbshon, who certainly does not side with the Rightist camp, to say the least, is decent enough to point an accusing finger at the figure who is the object of this saga.
He writes: "The judges of the High Court had no alternative. The Legal Advisor deliberately decided, contrary to the law, not only to personally accompany the inquiry of the leakage, but also refrained from seeking — as required by law — an official opinion from the government advisor of the Ministry of Law regarding her conflict of interests in the matter. When complaints arrived through the framework of the sub-Court, that official viewpoint was forthcoming. But even then, from the time that the latter determined that due to conflicting interests she was not allowed to supervise the inquiry, her people hastened to raise doubts against the professionalism which she waived, briefing and exposing fallacies in her statement and even vilified her. In the end, at the last moment before the hearing, Baharav Meira agreed to transfer the authority to the Chief Prosecutor, who was also blind to the fact that he, too, was guilty of conflicting interests when again, she, too, was guilty of not seeking the official opinion of the Ministry's Judicial Advisor.
