Drama In Israel’s Supreme Court As Petitioners Seek To Disqualify Aryeh Deri From Being Minister

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — In a dramatic hearing taking place at Israel’s Supreme Court Thursday morning, the court is debating the legality of Aryeh Deri’s appointment as a minister in the current Netanyahu government despite having been found guilty of tax offenses a year ago and receiving a suspended sentence.

The hearing comes just a day after Likud justice minister Yariv Levin announced a series of comprehensive legislative steps designed to strengthen the Knesset’s authority and weaken the Supreme Court.

A panel of 11 judges is hearing the petitions against Deri’s appointment. The prime minister is being represented by his own lawyer, Michael Rabilo. The petitions claimed that the Knesset had wrongly exploited its authority to legislate an individual-based law allowing Deri to serve and that the law itself is “unreasonable”.

State Attorney Gali Baharav-Miara issued her own opinion on the petitions Wednesday evening. Baharav-Miara claimed that the court does not have the authority to disqualify basic laws, even if the Knesset wrongly exploited its power to legislate such laws. Thus, the basic law forming the current government cannot be disqualified, although Baharav-Miara admitted that the amendment to the basic law allowing Deri’s appointment was “unreasonable” and had “many faults” and she maintained that Deri should not be appointed as a minister.

Rabilo disagreed, explaining to the court that “Public representatives are elected every four years. If the public thinks a law is invalid it will vote otherwise. In the meantime 2.3 million citizens wish to see Aryeh Deri as a government minister, and it is unprecedented in the world that the court intervenes in a prime minister’s decisions.”

Baharav-Miara’s attorney Aner Helman demanded that, despite the fact that the petitions should be dismissed,  the court itself should remove Deri from office. The court did not accede to Helman’s request and said that since Netanyahu’s appointment of Deri was not “excessively unreasonable”, they have no reason to intervene at present before issuing a ruling on the petitions.

Deri himself focused on another aspect of Baharav-Miara’s opinion in which she rejected claims that he had deceived the court and said that he would not return to political activity after his plea-bargain agreement. “I never committed to leave political life and I never deceived the court during the plea bargain,” Deri said.

He added that “I trust the Creator of the world, believe that the court’s 11-judge panel will hear the voice of over 2 million citizens including 400,000 Shas voters who wish to see me a minister in the government.”