Israeli cabinet moves to remove attorney general

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00:00In Israel, both the head of the Shin Bet, the kind of FBI of Israel, and the attorney general

00:07are not political appointees. They are civil servants and they're supposed to be completely

00:12independent of the executive. Never in the history of the state has either an attorney general or a

00:19head of the Shin Bet been fired. That says there are procedures in place for how such an act could

00:26be done, and the government has not followed these procedures in either case. But I want to

00:31even take a step back. The first act this week that the Netanyahu government undertook was to

00:38reappoint Itamar Ben-Gvir to be the minister of national security. The attorney general had

00:44determined that that was illegal because he's under investigation for abuse of power. Itamar

00:49Ben-Gvir is one of the most extremist members of Netanyahu's government. He's a man who was

00:53convicted 13 times of hate crimes and terror, so he's quite a case. That was the first defiance of

01:00the law. The second one was going ahead with the vote against the Shin Bet director, again, despite

01:06having been warned by the attorney general that this was not legal. And the government went ahead

01:11with that and is just bulldozing on ahead, now attempting to fire her herself. So the country

01:19is in a very profound crisis, and the government right now is sort of wavering, threatening not to

01:26adhere to Supreme Court decisions regarding these acts, and then sometimes taking a bit of a step

01:32back. So, Noga, I mean, I know that there have been some several mass protests in Israel recently,

01:39but as far as public officials go, is there any real opposition left to speak of

01:44in Israel, especially as this war in Gaza continues?

01:51Well, the legislative opposition in Israel has proven itself to be very weak so far. And you're

01:58right that the fact of this ongoing war has really confused matters because few Israeli

02:04party leaders are willing to stand up and say, we oppose this government, we oppose the war.

02:11In what was perceived initially as an existential war way back in October 2023,

02:17but things are shifting quite rapidly in Israel. So in the last few days, since the government

02:22stepped up these illegal actions, we have seen every single living former attorney general

02:29demand that the government step back. In recent days, we've seen retired chiefs of staff of the

02:35army openly, overtly say that the government has chosen to continue the war, not for military

02:41reasons, but to keep Netanyahu in power, heads of the Mossad. So it is becoming more and more

02:48of a struggle between the government and society itself. We've seen the heads of unions,

02:54commerce, industry all say that if the government dares to defy the Supreme Court,

02:59the entire country will come to a halt. That said, Erin, behind the scenes of this kind of

03:06vast public eruption, the government is moving ahead with other legislation, which is also

03:13authoritarian-ish. For example, this week, the government is planning on passing a law

03:18which would allow it basically to stuff the judicial appointments committee.

03:22And since Netanyahu is on trial, that means that his government, his ministers would be choosing

03:28the judges who hear his future appeals.

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