Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara called on the High Court of Justice to overturn the government’s decision to appoint Maj. Gen. Roman Gofman as the next head of the Mossad, and accused the appointments committee, which re-approved his selection earlier this week, of deliberately ignoring key facts over the incident in 2022 at the heart of petitions against the appointment.

The Senior Appointments Advisory Committee re-approved Gofman’s appointment on Tuesday by three votes to one after the High Court ordered the committee to hear and review new evidence and testimony which it failed to obtain when it first approved Gofman’s appointment in April.

But in her response to the committee’s decision sent to the court Thursday morning, Baharav-Miara stated that the new evidence and testimony the committee reviewed showed that Gofman was aware that the IDF’s 210th Division he commanded in 2022 had used a blogger, Ori Elmakayes, in an online influence operation, and that Gofman failed to intervene on Elmakayes’s behalf after the blogger was wrongfully arrested and indicted on espionage charges as a result of his work with Gofman’s division.

The attorney general said that the committee deliberately ignored the critical new evidence it reviewed after the court order, and that it appeared that “the target was drawn around the arrow,” essentially accusing the committee majority of seeking to appoint Gofman regardless of the facts of the case.

“The opinion of the committee majority ignores some of the real-time testimonies and documents, which have significant weight for understanding the matter, and includes ‘inaccuracies,’ as the committee chair said,” added the attorney general in reference to retired Supreme Court president Asher Grunis, who voted against immediately approving Gofman’s appointment and in favor of further clarifying the affair.

In 2022, the IDF’s 210th Division, commanded by Gofman, authorized Elmakayes to publish intelligence information on his Telegram channel in an online influence operation targeted at enemy elements in Syria who read his posts.

Elmakayes, who was 17 at the time and therefore a minor, was subsequently arrested and indicted for espionage when the Shin Bet became aware of the information he was publishing, without being aware that he was working with the IDF.

Elmakayes was held in detention for 44 days, and under house arrest for nearly a year and half, and was only exonerated 18 months later after being arrested, during which time Gofman did not inform the Shin Bet, the army, or the prosecution services that Elmakayes had been cooperating with the IDF.

In a detailed review of the case the attorney general filed to the court on Thursday, she set out the key details of the affair based on the investigation........

© The Times of Israel