In an interview with Arutz Sheva, attorney Yael Dolev speaks about Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s request that the elected government be empowered to appoint senior civil service positions.
This is in line with the American model, and is promoted as a way of facilitating the implementation of the elected government’s policies. However, the initiative has been denounced by the political opposition as opening the door to more cronyism and nepotism.
Attorney Dolev compared Netanyahu’s proposal to the business world, where a manager values the loyalty of the people working around him in addition to their job talents. “Currently in our state, there’s a desire for this, to be able to appoint loyalists to certain positions of trust, but there are also screening committees that examine the qualifications of the appointments.”
“We need to get good people, and the screening committees are supposed to ensure that the people are chosen for their talents and not just for their connections. However, there is a sense that these screening committees are too strict, and that more freedom needs to be given in the appointments to positions of trust. Striking a balance is complicated.”
It’s understandable that a person would want to appoint someone under him who is both loyal and competent, “but in politics, it’s hard to understand this and everyone tends to be self-righteous,” said Dolev. In her view, if Netanyahu’s proposal had come from a leftist government, the people now arguing against it would support it and vice versa.
“There is a law called the Equal Employment Opportunity Law. You can’t discriminate against people on political grounds. The law came about after the Mapai [original Labor Party] era, when it was not possible to get a civil service job without the right political affiliation. This is not the case now in Israel. It’s clear to all of us that if someone is not hired for a job because she’s woman, this is a violation of the law, but the same law also states that not hiring a person for their political stance is illegal. It’s based on the same principle of discrimination on the basis of something other than their job skills.”
“Hiring should be based on factors related to the job,” Dolev explained. However, in the political world, it’s more complicated because loyalty to the political stance of the elected government is a factor in the job. “If I hire someone to work for the Prime Minister’s office, I would not want to take someone who was going to work against me, and therefore it makes sense that his political stance needs to in alignment with that of the Prime Minister.”