The High Court ruling on Monday that rejected the petitions against the appointment of Roman Gofman as Mossad chief included sharp criticism from Justice Alex Stein against Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, the petitioners, and the conduct of the far-left Movement for Quality Government.

Stein devoted a significant portion of his ruling to criticizing the phenomenon of public petitions against senior appointments, writing: “In a reality of ‘everything is a High Court case,’ it is no wonder that appointments to senior public positions bring complainants, accusers, and slanderers who call themselves ‘public petitioners’ to our doorstep.”

Stein stated that after reviewing the extensive amount of materials submitted to the court, he concluded that there was no substance to the petitions. He said that the claims against Gofman were based mostly on “speculation and hearsay,” and the petitioners failed to present clear and convincing evidence that Gofman knew about the operation of a minor or intentionally concealed information after Elmakayes’ arrest.

Stein also slammed the Attorney General’s position, writing that he “rejects with both hands” the attempt to turn the proceeding into a “Gofman trial.”� He rejected Baharav Miara’s claim that the minority opinion of former Supreme Court President Asher Grunis in the appointments committee should be preferred over the committee’s majority opinion. According to Stein, the government decision regulating the committee’s work does not grant special status to a minority opinion, and “there is no place to invent a law that does not exist.”

Toward the end of his ruling, Stein sharply attacked remarks made during the hearing by the chairman of the Movement for Quality Government, Adv. Eliad Shraga (who called Gofman a “recidivist” and retracted the remark at the judge’s request). The judge noted that Gofman is “a highly accomplished man who dedicated the best years of his life to the security of the state and even risked his life for it,” and wondered how it is possible to call him “a serial criminal” without a factual or legal basis.

Stein then proposed establishing stricter standards for public petitioners and imposing significant court costs in cases of harm to the fairness of the proceedings. Accordingly, he proposed that the Movement for Quality Government should be ordered to pay Gofman 70,000 shekels in costs. However, his opinion was a minority one and was not adopted.

(YWN Israel Desk-Jerusalem)