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Report
Israeli cabinet moves to remove attorney general
FRANCE 24 English
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3/23/2025
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Transcript
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00:00
In Israel, both the head of the Shin Bet, the kind of FBI of Israel, and the attorney general
00:07
are not political appointees. They are civil servants and they're supposed to be completely
00:12
independent of the executive. Never in the history of the state has either an attorney general or a
00:19
head of the Shin Bet been fired. That says there are procedures in place for how such an act could
00:26
be done, and the government has not followed these procedures in either case. But I want to
00:31
even take a step back. The first act this week that the Netanyahu government undertook was to
00:38
reappoint Itamar Ben-Gvir to be the minister of national security. The attorney general had
00:44
determined that that was illegal because he's under investigation for abuse of power. Itamar
00:49
Ben-Gvir is one of the most extremist members of Netanyahu's government. He's a man who was
00:53
convicted 13 times of hate crimes and terror, so he's quite a case. That was the first defiance of
01:00
the law. The second one was going ahead with the vote against the Shin Bet director, again, despite
01:06
having been warned by the attorney general that this was not legal. And the government went ahead
01:11
with that and is just bulldozing on ahead, now attempting to fire her herself. So the country
01:19
is in a very profound crisis, and the government right now is sort of wavering, threatening not to
01:26
adhere to Supreme Court decisions regarding these acts, and then sometimes taking a bit of a step
01:32
back. So, Noga, I mean, I know that there have been some several mass protests in Israel recently,
01:39
but as far as public officials go, is there any real opposition left to speak of
01:44
in Israel, especially as this war in Gaza continues?
01:51
Well, the legislative opposition in Israel has proven itself to be very weak so far. And you're
01:58
right that the fact of this ongoing war has really confused matters because few Israeli
02:04
party leaders are willing to stand up and say, we oppose this government, we oppose the war.
02:11
In what was perceived initially as an existential war way back in October 2023,
02:17
but things are shifting quite rapidly in Israel. So in the last few days, since the government
02:22
stepped up these illegal actions, we have seen every single living former attorney general
02:29
demand that the government step back. In recent days, we've seen retired chiefs of staff of the
02:35
army openly, overtly say that the government has chosen to continue the war, not for military
02:41
reasons, but to keep Netanyahu in power, heads of the Mossad. So it is becoming more and more
02:48
of a struggle between the government and society itself. We've seen the heads of unions,
02:54
commerce, industry all say that if the government dares to defy the Supreme Court,
02:59
the entire country will come to a halt. That said, Erin, behind the scenes of this kind of
03:06
vast public eruption, the government is moving ahead with other legislation, which is also
03:13
authoritarian-ish. For example, this week, the government is planning on passing a law
03:18
which would allow it basically to stuff the judicial appointments committee.
03:22
And since Netanyahu is on trial, that means that his government, his ministers would be choosing
03:28
the judges who hear his future appeals.
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