The High Court of Justice on Tuesday unanimously annulled Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s appointment of retired judge Joseph Ben-Hamo to oversee the investigation into the Sde Teiman video-leak affair, ruling that the minister had exceeded the limitations set in law and had ignored explicit constraints the court imposed weeks ago.
A three-justice panel – composed of Supreme Court President Isaac Amit and justices Yael Willner and Khaled Kabub – held that Ben-Hamo could not legally serve in the role because he had been brought into the civil service solely for the purpose of this appointment.
That arrangement, the court said, failed to meet the legal requirement that the figure supervising the probe be a serving senior state employee rather than someone recruited ad hoc.
The ruling echoes the parameters the court laid out in mid-November, when it first permitted Levin to deviate – in “exceptionally rare” circumstances – from the norm that political figures cannot intervene in specific criminal investigations.
The probe concerns the July 2024 leak of video footage from the Sde Teiman detention facility, where IDF reservists were recorded abusing a Palestinian detainee. The leak and the allegations of subsequent obstruction have placed senior legal and military officials – including Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara and State Attorney Amit Aisman – in potential witness positions, prompting Levin to seek an outside supervisor.
The minister had framed his move as necessary to avoid conflicts of interest, while critics – including petitioners – warned that it allowed improper political reach into law-enforcement activity.
Levin’s response ‘beyond the law’
In Tuesday’s decision, the justices said that, while those unusual circumstances had indeed justified some flexibility, Levin’s response went far beyond what the law and the earlier ruling allowed.
Willner, writing for the court, emphasized that inserting someone into government service exclusively to fulfill the supervision role “intensified precisely the risks” the court had tried to minimize – namely, that the appointee could be perceived as an emissary of the minister, rather than a neutral senior official with an independent institutional identity.
Amit agreed with the legal flaw that Willner identified and added further grounds for striking down the appointment. According to his opinion, Levin did not substantiate the claim that no qualified senior state employee could fill the role.
The court noted the absence of documentation, systematic vetting, or evidence of outreach to eligible candidates – including sitting judges, whom Levin publicly claimed were unavailable or “blocked,” a contention the court found to be unsupported. During a hearing last week on the matter, the court had continuously pressed the minister’s representation for such documentation, signaling its importance.
Kabub, concurring, stressed that Levin himself had acknowledged in his correspondence the importance of appointing a serving senior state official, yet proceeded to narrow the potential pool so drastically that almost no civil servant remained eligible. Such filtering, Kabub wrote, risked creating the appearance of an appointment shaped by extraneous considerations, something aggravated by the lack of transparency about the selection process.
The NGO Movement for Quality Government in Israel called the outcome “an important victory for the rule of law,” arguing that the appointment was flawed from the outset because Ben-Hamo was not a serving civil servant, had political ties, and was selected hastily as part of what it described as an ongoing effort to sideline the attorney-general.
“The ruling sends a clear message: The political echelon must not take control of law enforcement agencies. This is a good day for Israeli democracy,” the NGO said.
The ruling reinforces the limits on ministerial authority regarding involvement in criminal investigations. However, the decision leaves the government with no appointed overseer at present, returning responsibility to the prosecution until the Justice Ministry proposes a new candidate who meets the legal criteria. The ruling effectively warns the minister against using “creative” personnel arrangements to circumvent structural safeguards.
The court did not rule out the possibility that Levin could select another figure – but only from within the existing, senior civil service and only through a documented, reasoned process consistent with the earlier judgment.