Dina Zilber slams behavior of government, likening attacks on the judiciary to faked document of plan for global domination.
By Paul Shindman, World Israel News
The outgoing deputy attorney general who is retiring at the end of December delivered a scathing speech on the weekend against what she implied was a leadership failure in Israel, saying senior government officials were fighting against judges, the media, academia and the world of culture.
In a video conference hosted by the Israel Democracy Institute, Dina Zilber likened the attacks against the judiciary and other institutions in Israel to a conspiracy theory that the Jews are trying to control the world.
“Instead of dealing with difficulties, [government officials] look away and point an accusing finger out” from themselves, Zilber said. “They produce a completely imaginary reality of ‘Deep State’, or of ‘the State Attorney’s Office within the State Attorney’s Office’ or of a state of evil civil servants who are secretly planning a coup.”
Zilber likened it to a blood libel, saying the attacks on are like “a glorious comeback with a twist, of the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion.'”
In the past, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has listed examples what he said were state prosecutors abusing their power to open investigations into politicians with whom they didn’t agree, calling it a “method.”
The outspoken lawyer has been involved in controversy during her tenure, seen as working against right-wing governments, and her comments reflected her apparent disdain.
“The government accuses officials of a coup d’etat instead of acknowledging the lack of leadership,” she said, accusing the government of being “the refuge of the fake leader,” although not mentioning Netanyahu by name.
Zilber, who has had a fractious history of opinionated remarks on the government, recounted a long list of attacks by members of Netanyahu’s government against not just the judiciary, but also the Left and Israel’s Arab minority.
“We create an imaginary reality of a prosecutor’s office within the prosecutor’s office, or of a state of evil officials in secret who are planning a coup,” Zilber said.
Zilber also slammed the government for failing to appoint dozens of senior positions in the civil service that remain unfilled, including senior justice appointments.
“No court or bureaucracy is preventing these appointments, which are cars on the stuck government train,” she said.