What a judicial coup looks like

Yossi Baum | X | Mar 6, 2025

By Jonathan Klinger – Aharon Barak, CC BY-SA 2.0

Mandatory Reading – Exposure:

1. Unbelievable: The first person to claim that the Attorney General’s legal opinion was binding on the government was—yes, yes—Aharon Barak himself. As a result, Rabin’s government fell, the right-wing rose to power, and Barak found himself in personal trouble.

1. The Agranat Commission, which Barak relied on to justify his claim that the Attorney General’s opinion is binding, actually ruled the opposite—that the Attorney General’s opinion does not bind the government, raising the possibility that Barak knowingly lied. (Attached: Commission protocol.)

Before diving into the dollar account scandal and Rabin’s resignation, it’s important to note that Barak was already considered one of the most powerful figures in Israel at the time, with nicknames such as “CEO of the State” and “King of Israel.” These titles only intensified after he effectively ousted Rabin. Here’s the full story, as detailed in “Kvod?” (Aharon Barak’s biography by Naomi Levitsky).

3. We all know about Rabin’s entanglement with his wife’s dollar account in the U.S.

   • What’s less known is that Rabin’s circle argued that the Finance Minister had the authority to impose a fine (kofer) on Rabin, which would have prevented prosecution.
   • Rabin’s Chief of Staff, Amos Eran, tried to persuade Barak on the matter—but to no avail. (Tensions between Rabin and Barak had already been brewing due to the Ofar-Yadlin affair.)

4. Barak’s own account of events:

   • After Eran failed, pressure was put on Finance Minister Yehoshua Rabinovitz to use his authority.
   • Rabinovitz asked Barak if it was true that imposing a fine would prevent prosecution.
   • Barak’s response:
     • “Yes, but on what basis would you do such a thing?”
     • Rabinovitz: “Prosecution will harm the government, especially with elections coming up.”
     • Barak: “It won’t pass the Supreme Court.”
     • Rabinovitz: “Who will take it to the Supreme Court? No one has standing to do so.”
     • Barak: “The Attorney General has standing, and I, Aharon Barak, will petition the Supreme Court against you. You, the Finance Minister, will have to hire a private attorney, because no state prosecutor will defend you. And you’ll have to pay for that lawyer yourself—because I won’t allow the state to fund it.”
       (End quote.)

5. Rabin’s disappointment was greater than anyone anticipated.

   • He realized his time as Prime Minister was over and immediately announced he would not run for re-election.
   • From then on, Rabin never forgave Barak. His wife, Leah, never forgave him either—until her dying day.
   • At Rabin’s funeral, as widely known, Leah Rabin refused to shake Barak’s hand.

6. The public reaction was extreme.

   • The country was split into two camps—pro-Rabin vs. anti-Rabin.
   • Rabin’s camp attacked Barak, accusing him of “forcing a Prime Minister to resign.”
   • This sparked a major debate:
     • Is the Attorney General merely an advisor to the government, or does he dictate its position?
     • One stance was promoted in Davar newspaper, while the opposing view was championed in Maariv (see attached).

7. Barak likely did not enjoy what happened next.

   • After Rabin resigned, elections were held.
   • The Left lost power, and Barak was blamed, earning the nickname “government toppler.”
   • From that moment on, it seems Barak vowed to ensure the Left would retain power—at all costs—regardless of which party officially held office.

8. Barak’s involvement didn’t end there.

   • He actively interfered in Rabin’s political decisions, making things even more difficult for him.
   • After Barak, his ally Yitzhak Zamir was appointed Attorney General. (Incidentally, Barak himself had been appointed after Meir Shamgar, and all three eventually ended up on the Supreme Court—what a coincidence!)
   • Barak fully supported giving maximum power to his protégé, Zamir.
   • Not surprisingly, it was Zamir who later wrote the first formal legal opinion claiming that the Attorney General’s decisions are “binding” on the government.

9. From then on, Barak began “dripping” this idea into various rulings—suggesting that it was an established legal doctrine.

   • This culminated in the Der’i-Pinhasi ruling, where Barak explicitly ruled that:
     

     “This view draws its legitimacy from our constitutional tradition. It was established in the 1962 Report of the Jurists’ Commission on the Powers of the Attorney General, and since then has become part of Israel’s legal practice.”
     (Referring to the Agranat Commission—screenshots and links attached.)

10. But this is a blatant deception—either an error or worse, an intentional lie.

    • Section 5 of the Agranat Report explicitly states the opposite.
    • This principle never became a constitutional tradition because the only person who applied it was Barak himself—to his own case in the dollar account scandal.
    • And even then, it was never independently used as a decisive factor in any ruling.

11. Not only Chief Justice Agranat held this view.

    • His predecessor, Justice Yitzhak Olshan, also explicitly wrote that the Attorney General’s opinion is not binding.
    • There is no tradition and no constitution backing Barak’s claim.

12. Even leading jurists rejected Barak’s position.

    • Former Attorney Generals Moshe Ben Ze’ev and Haim Cohn (who also served as Minister of Justice, State Attorney, and Deputy Chief Justice!) openly opposed Barak’s view.
    • Miriam Ben-Porat and others also rejected it.
    • At the time of the dollar account scandal, Barak acted as if this “constitutional tradition” already existed—even though everyone agreed it did not.

13. Years later, Barak admitted the truth:

    • “Indeed, there is no legal source for this. That’s why I wrote it into a ruling—to give it the force of binding precedent.”

14. Bottom line:

    • Barak never thought a constitutional basis was necessary to establish the Attorney General’s powers.
    • He acted as if the law and legal traditions were irrelevant—making up new legal theories out of thin air to serve his own ideological goals.
    • Some might say that he never truly believed in his own legal doctrines—but rather invented them to justify his personal and political agenda.
    • The “legal framework” he presented was nothing more than a public relations stunt.

If you’ve ever wondered what a judicial coup looks like—this is exactly how it happens.

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