Ten heads of Israeli colleges on Monday followed university presidents in declaring that they will launch major protest actions if the government should dismiss Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara.
Their letter comes after presidents of Israel’s eight research universities warned Sunday that their institutions will go on strike if the government fires Baharav-Miara. Justice Minister Yariv Levin began the lengthy process of removing the attorney general from her post last week, accusing her of having politicized her office and repeatedly thwarting the will of the government.
The college presidents said Levin’s plan represented “a significant and fundamental threat to the rule of law in Israel and to Israel’s status as a liberal democracy.
“A government that seeks to dismiss the person prosecuting its leader is taking action intended to intimidate all watchdogs. The call by ministers and members of the Knesset to dismiss the attorney general under the current circumstances is, in practice, a call to dismantle the rule of law,” they said.
The letter was signed by Prof. Smadar Donitza-Schmidt, President of the Kibbutzim College of Education; Prof. Aviad Kleinberg, President of the Ruppin Academic Center;
The signatories were Prof. Smadar Donitza-Schmidt, President of the Kibbutzim College of Education; Prof. Galia Sabar, President of the Tel Aviv-Yaffo Academic College; Prof. Aviad Kleinberg, President of the Ruppin Academic Center; Prof. Shalom Eliezer, President of Tel-Hai College; Prof. Nissim Ben-David, President of the Western Galilee College; Prof. Yitzhak Harpaz, President of the Yezreel Valley College; Prof. Michael Klinghoffer, President of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance; Prof. Adi Stern, President of Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design; Prof. Avraham Shitzer, President of the Kinneret College; and Prof. Sheizaf Rafaeli, President of Shenkar College.
In their Sunday letter, university leaders warned “of the unprecedented danger to the rule of law if the attorney general is fired.”
“In Israel’s democracy, the attorney general is the most important guardian against potential harm by the government of the rights of the citizens and individual residents in the country.
“She constitutes, together with the courts, the buffer between democratic rule, in which checks and balances on the government are necessary, and tyrannical dictatorial rule, in which the government can do as it pleases,” the letter read.
Justice Minister Yariv Levin attends a hearing of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, January 21, 2025. Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
The top professors asserted that the position of the attorney general is meant to serve the public, not politicians, and that calls to fire her constitute a call to break from the rule of law.
Education Minister Yoav Kisch hit back at the university presidents.
“I think you are confused,” he said in a statement. “Israel is a democracy, and the meaning of democracy is rule by the people, not rule by bureaucrats.”
Kisch vowed that the government would not be deterred by the pressure of the university presidents, and asserted that the removal of an attorney general did not endanger democracy.
“The attorney general is not above public criticism and is not immune to firing procedures when she operates in a way that goes beyond her professional role and turns herself into an opposition to the elected government,” Kisch wrote.
Kisch said that educational institutions should be “a place of critical thinking, not a tool for political confrontation” and said the university presidents were “attempting to impose their political agenda on the general public.”
Baharav-Miara has repeatedly opposed the government on its proposed legislation, appointments, and actions, arguing on numerous occasions that measures taken by the government — including its divisive judicial overhaul agenda — contravened the law and undermined the rule of law in different ways.
The judicial overhaul effort, of which Levin is an architect, divided the country and sparked mass protests in 2023. It was largely shelved upon the outbreak of war with the Hamas terror group, but parts of it have been revived in recent months, drawing vocal opposition from the attorney general.
The university chiefs also panned the overhaul legislation in 2023, warning of consequences to Israeli academia, including a brain drain and the withdrawal of foreign institutions from joint research with Israeli academics.
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