Israel’s criminal justice system under threat of attack

The Israeli criminal justice system appears to be under attack. On Monday, in the latest example, Supreme Court Justice Uzi Vogelman woke up to discover someone had plastered stickers denouncing the court on his home mailbox.

 

Vogelman filed a police complaint, just a day after one of his fellow justices, Anat Baron, was put under 24/7 protective detail following a series of death threats. The number of top legal officials facing dangerous incitement continues to balloon.

 

Already last year, Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit, then-state attorney Shai Nitzan and Liat Ben Ari, the lead prosecutor in the case against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, received threats and were given protective details.

 

Supreme Court President Esther Hayut has been under threat at various times and has a set an automatic protective detail as the chief of the judiciary.

 

While the list is long, there may be different agendas at play. Opposition leader Yair Lapid, for example, blamed Netanyahu for inciting against the courts with the speech he gave at the opening of his trial last month. Some of the ministers in his government, as well as members of Likud, are some of the most vocal and aggressive critics of the police, the Justice Ministry and the Supreme Court.

Vogelman filed a complaint with police on Monday after an anonymous person placed stickers on his mailbox with the message “Jewish blood cannot be taken lightly.” The implication of the person who left the threatening message could be an accusation that Vogelman is not valuing Jewish blood in his rulings, or that Vogelman will be held accountable for (according to the person who posted the threat) not protecting Jewish blood.

 

Vogelman has served on the Supreme Court since 2009, after being a judge on the Tel Aviv District Court and for many years an attorney in the State Attorney’s Office. On Monday afternoon, Sheffi Paz, an anti-immigration activist from south Tel Aviv revealed that she had placed the stickers on the judge’s mailbox. “It took me a long time to find his address,” she said. “Otherwise, I would have done it a long time ago.”

Baron filed a complaint with police on Sunday, saying she had received two threatening anonymous letters. The first letter appeared to threaten her son Ido and made reference to her son Ran, a musician killed in the Mike’s Place suicide bombing in 2003. “Expect to be punished,” one letter to Baron said. The second letter warned that “another punishment awaits.”

 

Baron has served on the High Court since 2015 and worked her way up each level of the court hierarchy prior to that.

 

Until the threat against Vogelman, there were different theories about who might be threatening Baron. Although she, like the entire High Court of Justice, green-lighted Netanyahu to form the current government despite his pending bribery trial, she also harshly criticized him for failing to voluntarily resign (Vogelman also criticized Netanyahu but green-lighted him).

 

Baron has also been under attack recently by journalist Kalman Libskind for allegedly failing to disclose certain conflicts of interest she had in cases she ruled on. The allegations have been dismissed by the Ombudsman for Judicial Complaints, but they still made waves, especially on the political Right. It dislikes Baron as one of the members of the court’s activist flank, which is frequently criticized by anti-migrant groups, settler activists and haredi (ultra-Orthodox) leaders.

 

However, following the threat against Vogelman, there is a new theory that the justices have been threatened by people upset with a recent ruling in which both Vogelman and Baron canceled an order to demolish part of the house of a terrorist who killed an IDF soldier. They formed the 2-1 majority against Justice David Mintz, who voted for the demolition to go forward. Both have been assigned protective details.

Mandelblit has been attorney-general since 2016 and made the decision to investigate and eventually indict Netanyahu on three charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust in the cases known as 1,000, 2,000 and 4,000. Known as sympathetic to right-wing political causes and to aspects of haredi political positions, incitement against him is unquestionably focused on his decision against Netanyahu.

 

In December 2018, Mandelblit’s father’s grave was desecrated by supporters of Netanyahu looking to convince him not to indict the prime minister. The attorney-general has had a protective detail for several years now and has faced intense public attacks by Likud officials and others.

 

Most recently, Mandelblit has come under attack for his involvement in the 10-year-old Harpaz Affair, the convoluted affair that began with a forged document and escalated into a conflict between then defense minister Ehud Barak and the IDF chief of staff at the time, Gabi Ashkenazi.

 

Mandelblit served at the time as the IDF’s military advocate-general and came under suspicion for not being straightforward about everything he knew about the document and when. The case against him was ultimately closed, and Netanyahu knew all this when he appointed Mandelblit his cabinet secretary and then attorney-general.

 

Nevertheless, journalists close to Netanyahu as well as his son Yair have been using the old case to again taint Mandelblit and attempt to prove that he is corrupt.

Former state attorney Shai Nitzan

Nitzan served for decades in the State Attorney’s Office, including defending controversial anti-terrorism policies against human-rights critics, before becoming state attorney in 2013. Supporters of Netanyahu started attacking Nitzan even earlier than Mandelblit, during a period in which Nitzan had already came out in support of charging Netanyahu with bribery in Case 4000, but Mandelblit had not yet made a final decision.

 

Nitzan also butted heads with the settler movement in the past far more than Mandelblit and had protective details more than once. However, he retired in December 2019 and has since been out of the public eye and no longer requires a public detail.

Ironically, though Ben Ari in some ways brought Netanyahu to power by being one of the lead prosecutors who forced former prime minister Ehud Olmert out of office for corruption, she has been torn apart in recent years with public attacks. She had a protective detail even before Nitzan since she filed complaints that she was being followed. She was also the first prosecutor to push for indicting Netanyahu, a decision eventually adopted by her superiors.

 

Ben Ari will have a high-profile role in the coming year as the lead prosecutor in the cases against Netanyahu, and officials expect that the criticism of her will escalate.

Chief Justice Esther Hayut

Hayut became chief justice in 2017, having worked her way through the judicial hierarchy like Baron. Since the law automatically grants her a protective detail as head of the judiciary regardless of whether there are direct threats against her, Hayut’s life has not changed much.

 

However, anti-migrant groups, settler groups and right-wing groups like Im Tirzu regularly protest against her. In some instances, some of those criticizing her have been accused of incitement.