Candidiate for Bar head Nave attacks State Attorney’s office
Efi Nave, the controversial candidate for the chairmanship of the Israel Bar Association, attacked the State Attorney’s Office’s slow pace of dealing with cases in an election campaign advertisement on Sunday, saying that this was the reform that Israeli citizens needed.
“Today, cases, even small ones, lay at the State Attorney’s Office for 3-5 years – sometimes even more – without receiving a decision,” said Nave. “In the meantime, people are getting foreclosures, frozen bank accounts, business activity stopping because people have no way of paying salaries, travel bans, lives are ruined in a moment – and this is before talking about the families that fall apart and the good names that are ruined and health destroyed.”
Nave said that citizens were having their lives ruined because the State Attorney’s Office had no motivation to hurry and that in their eyes they have as much time as they would need to address a case.
The former Bar head demanded that the State Attorney make decisions on cases within 1-2 years. If a decision is not made within that time frame, Nave said that the case should be closed.
“This is the reform that needs to be done,” said Nave,
as ongoing judicial reform negotiations and debates continued in the country.
Nave came out against the judicial reform last Monday but said that the Bar Association had become too politicized and needed to only challenge the proposals in suitable forums such as the Knesset. Nave said that current Bar leadership had involved the organization far too much in protests and politics, jeopardizing its ability to represent the interests of all its members. The previous Bar chairman, Avi Himi, was an outspoken critic of the judicial reform proposed by Justice Minister Yariv Levin in January.
“Everyone agrees that the judicial system and law enforcement need changes, but not the current way. I’m against many parts of the plan of Justice Minister Levin, and, of course, if they will try to take attorneys out of the Judicial Selection Committee,” said Nave. “But I’m against all attempts to enter the Bar into the political field.”
Nave also on Wednesday attacked suggestions to turn the Bar into a volunteer organization, which he said would erase all the achievements of the association. Currently, Israeli attorneys must be a member of the Bar.
Following a 2019 sex-forjudgeship scandal, which was dropped by the State Attorney’s Office in 2021 for lack of trial viability, Nave resigned from the chairmanship of the Bar.
Himi resigned in January following his own sex scandal leaving an opening for the chairman position that will be decided in an election on Tuesday.
Nave has faced controversy in his run. He overcame possible disqualification in mid-May over technical matters pertaining to digital signatures of support from other lawyers, rather than hand-written signatures.
The Movement for Quality Government has called on the State Attorney’s Office to file an ethics complaint against Nave’s running for the office, over both the sex scandal and a 2022 conviction for sneaking his partner past customs border security at Ben-Gurion Airport in 2018. MQG renewed the call on Thursday by appealing to the Attorney-General’s Office.