Who Elected the Attorney General?

Israel’s legal establishment was never elected by the public. Yet more and more Israelis feel that it now behaves as though it sits above the public, above ministers, and even above the government itself.

Let’s stop pretending this is normal!

Because what is happening in Israel is not a routine legal dispute. It is not a technical argument between professionals. It is not some dry constitutional seminar. It is a power struggle over one basic question: who actually runs the State of Israel? The people and the government they elected, or a legal elite that was never elected by anyone? The Justice Ministry itself defines the Attorney General as the head of the executive branch’s legal system, and the government formally voted no confidence in Gali Baharav-Miara in March 2025, arguing that the relationship had broken down in a deep and prolonged way.

That alone should have set off alarms across the country.

Because an Attorney General is supposed to advise the government, not govern it. She is supposed to help elected officials act within the law, not gradually turn herself into a veto center above them. But that is exactly how millions of Israelis now see this office: not as legal counsel, but as an unelected ruling mechanism. And the more this system expands its reach, the less it looks like oversight and the more it looks like political control.

And then came the affair around the former Military Advocate General.

This is where the entire mask came off.

Because even if you strip away every slogan, every emotional argument, every partisan talking point, one thing is undeniable: the public saw a legal system that appeared deeply uncomfortable investigating itself. A legal adviser in the Justice Ministry determined that Baharav-Miara and another senior official should avoid involvement in overseeing the police investigation because of conflict-of-interest concerns. That is not a minor detail. That is a devastating institutional fact. If the Attorney General’s office has to step back because of conflict concerns in a matter involving the former Military Advocate General, then the public is entitled to ask whether the system is capable of policing itself honestly.

And the optics got even worse.

Baharav-Miara met with former Military Advocate General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi during the height of the storm around the Sde Teiman affair, and presented that meeting as part of a wider timeline that, in the eyes of her critics, raises serious questions about how the matter was handled. Petitions and public complaints alleged she had personal involvement in updates to the court about the handling of the leak, and that these allegations themselves became part of the conflict-of-interest case raised against her. These are allegations and public reports, not final criminal findings, but politically and institutionally, they are more than serious enough.

And this is exactly why trust is collapsing.

Because ordinary Israelis look at this and see a pattern. When ministers want to govern, suddenly everything is impossible. There are legal barriers. Procedural blocks. Red lines. Delays. Warnings. Objections. But when one of the system’s own senior figures lands at the center of a storm, suddenly everything becomes delicate, sensitive, complicated, internal. Suddenly the system discovers patience. Suddenly everyone speaks in whispers. Suddenly the instinct is not force, it is protection. That may not be how the legal establishment describes itself. But it is absolutely how a huge part of the public now experiences it.

And let’s say the obvious: this office was not chosen by the public. Baharav-Miara was appointed in February 2022 by the Bennett-Lapid government. It reinforces what many voters in the national camp already believe, that even when the left loses at the ballot box, its worldview survives through unelected institutions that continue shaping the country from above.

That is why this issue is bigger than one personality.

It is bigger than whether someone likes Gali Baharav-Miara or dislikes her. It is bigger than one petition, one leak, or one investigation. This is about a governing model that has become fundamentally unhealthy. A democracy cannot function normally when unelected legal officials accumulate so much authority that elected ministers begin to look like temporary guests inside their own government. A democracy cannot stay healthy when every major political question eventually runs through a legal class that seems to view itself not as a servant of public authority, but as its superior.

No serious person is saying Israel should have no legal constraints. No serious person is saying there should be no Attorney General, no prosecutors, no rules, no courts. That is not the argument. The argument is much simpler: law is supposed to restrain power, not replace it. Advice is supposed to guide the government, not suffocate it. Oversight is supposed to preserve democracy, not quietly substitute itself for democracy.

And that is why so many Israelis are fed up.

Because this no longer feels like legal professionalism. It feels like rule by people who were never elected, never stood before the public, never asked for a mandate, and yet increasingly behave as though they are entitled to set the boundaries of national policy from above.

That cannot continue forever.

Because once the public reaches the conclusion that the real rulers of the state are not the people they elect, but the officials who can block, delay, reinterpret, and override them, then the damage is no longer only political. It becomes constitutional. It becomes democratic. It becomes existential.

And at that point, the question is no longer, Who is the Attorney General?

The question becomes: Who gave the Attorney General the right to act like the government?