Posted on 12/07/21
| News Source: i24
Avichai Mandelblit accuses former prime minister of wanting to take over judiciary, according to report
Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit said that former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu endangered Israel's democracy and accused the opposition leader of wanting to stack the judiciary with loyalists while in office, according to a report in Channel 12 news published Tuesday.
Mandelblit made the comments during closed conversations, the report states.
Netanyahu's preference for personal loyalty in his official appointments "constituted a danger to democracy," Mandelblit warned, citing Poland and Hungary as examples of where he saw Israel heading with Netanyahu at the helm.
"We found ourselves in a war over the DNA of the Jewish people and the State of Israel in the modern era," the attorney general said, as quoted in the report.
He said that Netanyahu's big plan was to take over the centers of power in the judiciary by appointing judges to the Supreme Court and making other appointments to different offices, which Mandelblit said would have “caused us to fall apart from inside."
Netanyahu was charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three separate indictments with his trial recently resuming in the Jerusalem District Court as the prosecution's star witness, Nir Hefetz, Netanyahu's former spokesman, took the stand.
Mandelblit said that if Netanyahu continued in power there was the potential of him avoiding trial.