Transportation Minister Miri Regev (Likud) has sent a letter to Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, demanding that an investigation be opened against former Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Forum 555, on suspicion of "criminal gathering, civil disobedience, and an attempted coup d'état."
Regev said that her decision to turn to Baharav-Miara is due to a video clip circulating on social media. The clip, filmed three years ago, "shows without any shadow of a doubt that beginning in March 2020, former officials began concocting a plan for a coup d'état and civil disobedience, with detailed and careful planning - and the attempt to implement it is what we are seeing on the ground in recent days."
Regev explained, "In the aforementioned video clip, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak was recorded detailing his plan in a Zoom conversation with a group of protest activists." She added that the plan included "inciting civil disobedience in an intentional fashion, falsely presenting a danger to democracy with funding and investments totaling millions of shekels, leading to the point of no return - a civil war - as he begs them to create clashes with the police, saying, 'The more clashes there are with the police, the more it will grow stronger.'"
"At the peak of their severity, these things result from the horrific statement by one who served as prime minister and Chief of Staff," she emphasized. "We cannot and we will not ignore these repulsive words, especially since they were said by someone who served in such important positions in the State of Israel, and since there is a tangible concern that his plan will indeed be implemented and endanger the public's welfare and safety."
She noted that a former pilot and a founder of Forum 555 told Channel 14 this week that "indeed, the coup d'état has been planned for a number of years, together with Ehud Barak, and it is not connected to any political and/or legislative event."
"On the face of things, and according to the instructions of the law, this is a clear and immediate threat to harm the order of the government and proper management, which therefore must lead to a tangible concern of harm to the State's security in all its aspects, harm to the State's diplomatic and security position, as well as harm to the State of Israel's foreign relations.
"We cannot ignore these things, at a time when we see the plan concocted years ago becoming reality, and chaos reigning in the streets. Therefore I demand that a criminal investigation against Ehud Barak and members of the 555 organization be immediately opened, and that they be brought to justice for the forbidden acts which they have committed," she concluded.