{"id":67372,"date":"2026-05-12T07:07:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T07:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/67372\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T07:07:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T07:07:09","slug":"high-court-to-review-netanyahus-mossad-chief-appointment-of-gofman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/67372\/","title":{"rendered":"High Court to review Netanyahu&#8217;s Mossad chief appointment of Gofman"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">The hearing will be held before Justices Dafna Barak-Erez, Ofer Grosskopf, and Alex Stein.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">Gofman, currently Netanyahu\u2019s military secretary, was approved last month by the Advisory Committee for Senior Appointments and is scheduled to take office on June 2 for a five-year term.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">The petitions, filed by the Movement for Quality Government in Israel, Forum Homat Magen LeIsrael, and Ori Elmakayes, ask the court to block the appointment or require the committee to reconsider it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">At the center of the case is the Elmakayes affair, involving allegations related to the use of a minor in an unauthorized IDF-linked influence operation connected to the 210th Bashan Division while Gofman commanded it.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/israel-news\/politics-and-diplomacy\/article-895006\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara<\/a> told the court Sunday that the appointment \u201ccannot stand,\u201d arguing that the affair casts a heavy shadow over Gofman\u2019s integrity and that the decision to appoint him suffers from extreme unreasonableness.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">Her position does not dispute Gofman\u2019s long military service, including his conduct on October 7. Rather, she argued that the question before the court is whether the conduct attributed to him creates a legal flaw that disqualifies him from leading the Mossad.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">Gofman has rejected the allegations, arguing in his response to the court that he did not operate Elmakayes, directly or indirectly, and that there is no basis for the court to intervene in the appointment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">The advisory committee has also asked the court to dismiss the petitions, saying its majority decision was lawful and that there was no defect justifying judicial intervention.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">However, committee chairman and former Supreme Court president Asher Grunis dissented from the majority approval, finding that flaws related to the Elmakayes affair made Gofman unsuitable for the post.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">Grunis was the lone dissenting voice in the committee, finding integrity flaws in Gofman\u2019s conduct and concluding that it was not appropriate to appoint him Mossad chief.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">Tuesday\u2019s hearing will test not only the appointment itself, but the extent to which the court is prepared to intervene in the prime minister\u2019s choice for the head of Israel\u2019s foreign intelligence agency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The hearing will be held before Justices Dafna Barak-Erez, Ofer Grosskopf, and Alex Stein. Gofman, currently Netanyahu\u2019s military&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67373,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16469],"tags":[244,18097,39397,18096,16498,16501,21368],"class_list":{"0":"post-67372","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-benjamin-netanyahu","8":"tag-benjamin-netanyahu","9":"tag-gali-baharav-miara","10":"tag-head-of-mossad","11":"tag-high-court-of-justice","12":"tag-mossad","13":"tag-roman-gofman","14":"tag-the-october-7-massacre"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116560346745621606","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}