The Lavi civil rights and good governance organization submitted a demand to Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit to investigate tendentious leaks from deliberations of the Judicial Appointments subcommittee against Gideon Sapir, candidate for the office of Supreme Court judge.
The background of the demand is an article published in Israel Hayom, in which sources familiar with the committee related that during committee meetings with candidates Sapir called Olim "foreigners" and Arabs "natives". "It was no slip of the tongue; it represented his views," said the source. "These are not values that the committee can identify with, and he was therefore not found worthy."
Lavi's Executive Director Yosef ben Baruch wrote to AG Mandelblit that "tendentious leaks diametrically oppose procedural rules, pollute the process, and raise concerns of conflict of interest between one of the Judicial Appointments Committee members and candidate Sapir, and I therefore request that you act in accordance with your authority and order an investigation into the leak."
Ben Baruch stressed, "As is known, the Judicial Selection Committee has yet to choose the four Supreme Court judges from among the candidates ... of course tendentious leaks are intended to blacken the name of candidate Sapir and harm his chances.
"There is no need to elaborate and describe to you in detail the damage caused by these leaks from within the subcommittee to the proper appointment procedure of judges, and badly harms public trust in the judicial system."
Lavi requests that Mandelblit "act in accordance with your authority and order an investigation into these leaks against Sapir, in order to locate the leak's source and determine whether s/he is a member of the Judicial Appointments Committee.
"In the event that the source of the leak is a member of the Judicial Appointments Committee, I would ask you to examine whether there is a conflict of interest between the source and candidate Sapir, and whether the leak's source may be permitted to sit in the Judicial Appointments Committee in issues holding implications for candidate Sapir," said the letter to the Attorney General.