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The Judicial Selection Committee appointed on Sunday High Court judge Yizhak Amit as permanent Chief Justice. The vote on the 14th president of the Supreme Court comes after a series of delays over 15 months since the previous court president, Justice Esther Hayut, retired from the position.
Justice Minister Yariv Levin, who serves as the chairman of the committee, boycotted the discussion, as did coalition representatives Minister Orit Struck and Knesset lawmaker Yitzhak Kreuzer. After hours of discussions in their absence, the most senior judge on the Supreme Court, Amit, 65, was elected to the position. The vote followed the tradition of elected the most senior justice to assume the presidency.
Amit was prevented from participating in the discussion since it dealt with his appointment. In addition, the committee voted to appoint Justice Noam Solberg, 63, to the position of deputy president of the Supreme Court.
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High Court judge Yizhak Amit was elected permanent Chief Justice
(Photo: Alex Kolomoisky)
Amit is accused by Levin and others of presiding over several cases in which he had conflicts of interest , after a Yediot Acharonot investigation found that he appeared in the cases involving a property he owns in Tel Aviv together with his brother under an assumed name. The hearing was held after the high Court ordered Levin to allow it to meet in order to appoint a president, after the Justice Minister refused to allow the committee to meet as he attempts to reform the judicial system.
Levin, who was not present at the hearing, responded to the decision in a joint statement with Struck and Kreuzer. "Today, the Judicial Selection Committee convened and supposedly 'elected' a Supreme Court president. We did not participate in the hearing. Electing a Supreme Court president while a heavy cloud hangs over the candidate's conduct in a number of different cases, including allegations of his alleged conflict of interest and construction irregularities in his residence, while giving contradictory answers to the allegations that were made, and without the basic obligation to conduct a professional and objective examination of those allegations, is a moral disgrace, contrary to all rules of proper administration and reeks of selective enforcement."
This means that the judicial system, which requires joint administrative decisions by the minister and the president, will not be made
"The Israeli public knows what has happened in the past, and even in the very recent past, with the fate of leading candidates for other senior positions, whose appointments were rejected and disqualified due to similar allegations. No less serious, the aforementioned 'selection' was made by virtue of an illegal order of the High Court of Justice, at the height of a fundamentally illegal process, which stripped the Minister of Justice of his statutory powers, and turned the Judicial Selection Committee into a rubber stamp of the High Court," the statement said.
"The High Court's order was issued even though there is no real urgency in appointing a president to the Supreme Court, as the acting president has all the powers of the president; but the High Court judges have found a way to force this appointment through a forceful and illegal step. This is a sad day for democracy and a sad day for our legal system. A president who is 'elected' in such a way will not be able to gain the public's trust, which is necessary for the legal system as a fundamental condition for its existence. On behalf of a huge public whose democratic rights were trampled on in this illegal process, and whose expectation of a fair and moral legal system was also trampled on, we will not stop acting until we rectify this shameful situation from the ground up," the statement concluded.
President Isaac Herzog congratulated Amit. "For decades and in various instances, Justice Amit has contributed greatly to the Israeli legal system, and I am confident that his many skills and rich experience will play a significant role in leading the Supreme Court and the judiciary with responsibility, discretion and dedication to the benefit of the State of Israel, and in the very important task of increasing public confidence in the legal system," he said in a statement.
"The judicial system in general and the Supreme Court in particular are a critical part of our democratic fabric and the protection of human and civil rights. We must guard them with all vigilance. I believe that we must now move forward and put behind us the debate that has taken place in recent weeks surrounding the selection process for the president of the Supreme Court. We must look ahead, lower the flames of controversy, and strive to reach understandings as much as possible."
The High Court of Justice ruled on Friday that the Judicial Selection Committee must convene Sunday, after an extension was granted to discuss allegations against Amit, who was supposed to be elected on January 16 and has served as acting president until now.
Levin decided to boycott the hearing in protest of the High Court order ordering him to convene the committee and also because of his firm opposition to Amit's appointment as president of the Supreme Court. Against the backdrop of the boycott by the Minister of Justice and coalition representatives, Amit is expected to receive the support of two Supreme Court Justices, Justices Solberg and Dafna Barak-Erez, two representatives of the Bar Association, Muhammad Na'amaneh and Yonit Kalmanovitz, and opposition representative Knesset lawmaker Karin Elharar.
Levin believes that the High Court orders forced him to convene the committee to select a president, instead of discussing a compromise outline he proposed to the Supreme Court, which also includes the election of three judges who are currently missing from the Supreme Court. In the minister's opinion, these orders are illegal, and constitute a crossing of the line by the High Court in the face of the government and the Knesset. In the meantime, Levin made it clear that he will continue to insist that the allegations against Amit be investigated to the fullest extent, despite the words of Attorney General Gali Baharav Miara and the head of the police investigations division, Boaz Balat, who stated that there is no suspicion of criminality in the judge's actions.
The disciplinary investigation demanded by Levin is based on about 15 newspaper publications, including the Yedioth Ahronoth exposé , which, in the minister's opinion, allegedly cast doubt on Amit's conduct, citing conflicts of interest in which he was involved during his tenure as a judge. This conflict of interest, the minister emphasizes, indicates his unsuitability for the position. Levin does not intend to recognize Amit's presidency, so until the end of his term he will continue not to cooperate with him in the field of court administration.
This means that the judicial system, which requires joint administrative decisions by the minister and the president, will not be made. Among other things, decisions will not be made on the subject of selecting judges, adding budgets, selecting presidents and establishing search committees, building courts, and planning the system for the coming years. Therefore, by the end of Levin's term, only 10 justices will serve on the Supreme Court instead of 15.
Some 4,800 objections were submitted to the Judicial Selection Committee against Amit's election. They were discussed by the committee about three weeks ago, where they were presented by members of right-wing legal associations who were invited in a precedent-setting manner to speak.
These are the main allegations:
Appeared under a different name in legal proceedings and did not report
A Ynet and Yedioth Ahronoth report revealed that in recent years Amit was a party to several civil legal proceedings concerning an apartment he and his brother own in south Tel Aviv, using his former name, Yitzhak Goldfreind, without reporting it and without the lawyers knowing that they were representing a Supreme Court judge. In one of the proceedings, an indictment was even filed against him.
Also, a judge who heard one of these proceedings appeared on the Judicial Selection Committee while Amit was a member of it. At the same time, Amit heard cases from the law firm that represented him and his brother and in a case involving the Tel Aviv Municipality which was conducting proceedings regarding a property he owned.
Amit, on the other hand, claimed that he became aware of the existence of the procedures mentioned only following the submission of the inquiry. According to him, his brother and he received from their parents as a gift two stores on Eilat Street in Jaffa, named after Dov and Yitzhak Goldfreind, as their names were at the time. In 2016, Amit gave his brother a general-notarial power of attorney to deal exclusively with the aforementioned properties, precisely in order not to be involved in anything related to them. He signed a power of attorney for his brother regarding a lawsuit to dissolve a partnership in the property filed by the developer and a number of rights holders in the property against dozens of other rights holders, including Amit and his brother.
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Another proceeding is a request for leave to appeal filed against the Magistrate's Court decision issued in the first proceeding. In this proceeding, Amit and his brothers, along with many others, appear as formal respondents only, in light of the fact that the order to dissolve the partnership was not issued against them. In any case, Amit had no knowledge of the existence of the proceeding, and no document was submitted in his name or on his behalf in the proceeding.
In another proceeding, Amit signed by virtue of the power of attorney given to the entrepreneur, who initiated the administrative petition process, without informing Amit's brother about the procedure, and without the knowledge of the judge.
Regarding the so-called "concealment," the reason Amit appears in the proceedings under his former last name, Goldfreind, is that the rights holder information for the purpose of filing court documents was taken from the original papers, where the judge appears under this last name. In the general-notarial power of attorney given by the judge to his brother, it is explicitly written Yitzhak Amit, not Yitzhak Goldfreind, so the claim that Amit "concealed" his identity is unfounded.
Itamar Eichner and Alexandra Lukash participated in the preparation of this article