When it came to war crimes, Baharav-Miara was loyal to the government
From approving “collateral damage” of dozens of innocent people to the arrest of Palestinians who expressed solidarity with their relatives in Gaza, the Attorney-General* has approved every inequity that this government has done to the Palestinians. A “defender of democracy” she isn’t, but the alternative is worse
By Orly Noy • Translated by Sol Salbe
“The attorney-general looks like a lioness when she fights for Jewish democracy, but when it comes to relations with the Arabs, she becomes Ben-Gvir.” These words were told to me in an interview about six months ago by Dr Hassan Jabareen, director of the Adalah Centre for the Legal Rights of the Arab Minority in Israel. Amazingly, in a letter sent yesterday (Sunday) by Gali Baharav-Miara to the government ministers ahead of the debate and the vote on her impeachment, she actually argues exactly the same thing: I was your Ben-Gvir, why and for what do you intend to dismiss me?
In her statement of defence, the distinguished gatekeeper, the one whose ouster, if carried out, would mark the final collapse of Israeli democracy, lists a series of government decisions she has supported over the past year and a half. Some of them constitute a severe contortion of the law, some are tainted by deep racial discrimination, some amount to support for blatant war crimes and crimes against humanity. Behind almost every example she cites in the letter as evidence of her loyalty to the government are crimes of horrific proportions that have been approved by her. The “doctrine of action against Gaza,” for example, is a whitewashed name for Israel’s war of annihilation against the Gaza Strip, which brought Israel to the International Court of Justice on charges of committing the crime of genocide, inter alia by killing dozens and hundreds of innocent people who were defined as “collateral damage” in a target marking process carried out by artificial intelligence.
The significance of the “war on terror and incitement to terrorism,” of which the Attorney-General is proud, has been the mass arrests of Palestinian citizens of Israel over the past year and a half for the most minor expressions of solidarity with their people being massacred in Gaza. At a time when the Hebrew social networks are drowning in explicit incitement to genocide, Baharav-Miara approved the detention until the end of the proceedings of Arab citizens for trifling posts such as “Good Morning Gaza,” as well as the filing of indictments against them. For months after October 7, the Attorney-General backed Ben-Gvir’s police policy preventing Arab citizens from demonstrating against the war, while blood continued to flow in the streets of Gaza.
In her letter, Baharav-Miara reminds the ministers that she has also fully cooperated with the government regarding “the expansion of settlements and support for them,” a policy that only a few days ago was defined as a war crime in a new UN report. What kind of jurist is the one who prides herself on supporting such a blatant violation of international law? What kind of a legal adviser to the government brags about approving war crimes?
Baharav-Miara does not stop there, and amazingly continues to proudly brandish the dizzying series of crimes she supported: administrative detention, one of the draconian tools used by Israel to oppress Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line; the demolition of “terrorist homes,” which is collective punishment of people who have not been charged and certainly not convicted of anything; holding the bodies of Palestinians for bargaining purposes, like an act of a lowly mafia-like organisation; and defended the government’s “policy on humanitarian aid to Gaza,” a euphemistic-to-the-point-of-nausea term for the starvation of more than two million besieged, exhausted bombarded people. This is the splendour of the illustrious defender of democracy.
The truth is that Baharav-Miara has grossly failed to carry out her mandate — to alert the government to flagrant violations of the law, and to do everything in her power to prevent these violations, including prosecuting the perpetrators of the crimes. Had she carried out her job properly, perhaps the genocide in Gaza would have stopped, Israel would not have been put on trial for committing the crime of genocide, and the arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant would not have been necessary.
According to her own admission, as is evident from the letter she sent to the ministers, Baharav-Miara is not worthy of the position she holds. She complains to them that “it is not trust that the proposal seeks to promote, but loyalty to the political echelon,” but the entire first part of her letter is a testimony to the criminal loyalty she showed to the murderous, illegal policy of the government throughout the war. If it weren’t for the horror embodied behind those words, it would be almost funny.
Nevertheless, we still need to come out and protest against the proposal to oust her, because the forces facing her are more despicable and more dangerous than her. Every day that this blood-stained government remain in office, the lives of millions of people are in very real danger, and we must resist it in every way until it falls. This is also the rationale behind Hadash Party Leader Ayman Odeh’s call for Arab citizens to join the demonstrations. Odeh, more than anyone else, knows what part Baharav-Miara and [Shin Bet head] Ronen Bar play in this vile regime of oppression. His call on Palestinian citizens to join the demonstrations is not an expression of support for them, but rather a testimony to the depth of the disruption of the reality in which we live.
It is essential to take action against this bad government and the way it strives to become hermetically sealed from any oversight or criticism. But to turn the attorney general — who, by her own admission, whitewashed almost all the crimes of the government and the army in the genocide war and the persecution of Palestinian civilians — into a knight of democracy is a very melancholic joke.
Baharav-Miara is the embodiment of the ethnocratic rationale of democracy for Jews only. And if there is one thing that these bitter days prove, it is that the idea that selective democracy for Jews only is not only immoral; It is a foolish, disengaged and dangerous illusion, for Palestinians and Jews alike.
- Attorney-General: Israeli English renders the government Legal Adviser as Attorney-General. In reality this Public Servant’s job is far more similar to a Westminster Solicitor-General.
