Her admirers see her as a solitary heroine, standing in the way of Israel’s most right-wing and religious government as it pushes the country toward authoritarianism.
Her detractors see her as a public enemy, blocking Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempts to supercharge majority rule and rein in a power-mad, left-leaning judiciary.
What no one disputes is that Gali Baharav-Miara, 67, the first woman to serve as the attorney general of Israel, has almost single-handedly defeated many of the government’s efforts to undercut the Supreme Court, crack down on the news media and free itself of some of the biggest checks on its own power.
Now, Ms. Baharav-Miara is girding for what could be her biggest battle yet as the country heads into elections next month, in which coalition lawmakers promise to overwhelm her resistance to their agenda if they are re-elected.
The Israeli police, who are overseen by the extremist right-wing minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, are increasingly seen by critics as serving his political interests. Officers have been videotaped roughing up left-wing protesters and going relatively easy on pro-government demonstrators.
Opposition figures and independent analysts worry that the police could look the other way at pro-government violence on Election Day, or interfere with voting in Arab towns or liberal precincts considered hostile to Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Ben-Gvir.
Such moves could cause Ms. Baharav-Miara to take a case before the Supreme Court. But the government has been pushing the message that some of the court’s decisions can be disregarded, such as if they impinge on the prerogatives of the legislative branch.
That, in turn, is fueling concerns that Israel could be approaching a constitutional crisis — or even a kind of Jan. 6 moment.
Ms. Baharav-Miara has warned that much more than who will be the next prime minister is hanging in the balance.
In a speech in May, she listed the damage already done to Israeli democracy: “Turning the law enforcement system into a tool for preserving government power and suppressing opponents of the regime. Deterrence of watchdogs, free media and civil society organizations. The potential to undermine the ability to hold fair elections.”
“The changes are happening quickly,” she continued, “but repairing the damage will not be quick. It will be difficult to turn back the clock.”
Saying No to a Judicial Overhaul
Ms. Baharav-Miara had been the top state civil lawyer in Tel Aviv and was in private practice when she was appointed to a six-year term as attorney general in 2022, during the short-lived premiership of Naftali Bennett.
Her responsibilities are unlike those of her U.S. counterpart. Her office oversees all prosecutions in Israel, provides the prime minister and his coalition with binding legal advice — on legislation, appointments and more — and represents the state in court.
It is seen largely as a nonpartisan post, and Ms. Baharav-Miara, who has given no interviews as attorney general, came to it with no experience in pure politics.
Her education came quickly.
When Mr. Netanyahu returned to power in late 2022, he named Aryeh Deri, an ultra-Orthodox party leader recently convicted of tax fraud, as both interior and health minister, with control over huge budgets. In a closed-door meeting, Mr. Netanyahu urged her not to oppose the appointment, arguing that Mr. Deri would be a strong addition, according to two people briefed on the conversation who, like others interviewed, insisted on anonymity out of fear of reprisal. She refused, Mr. Netanyahu defied her advice — and the Supreme Court ultimately backed her.
Weeks later, in early 2023, Mr. Netanyahu’s justice minister, Yariv Levin, unveiled a sweeping judicial overhaul, arguing that activist courts had lost the public’s trust and made effective governance impossible. He wanted to strip government lawyers of the power to restrain ministers’ actions, seize control over judicial appointments and allow Parliament to override court rulings by a simple majority.
Ms. Baharav-Miara pushed back hard, saying publicly that Mr. Levin’s plan would weaken the courts, give the government unchecked power, threaten human rights and undermine protection for minorities, leaving Israel a “democracy in name only.”
The judicial overhaul set off weekly demonstrations that shook the country. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis blocked highways and shut down the economy. Many held signs depicting Ms. Baharav-Miara and her recognizable shock of blond hair as a symbol of resistance.
Mr. Netanyahu and his allies took notice.
That July, Ms. Baharav-Miara was summoned to a cabinet meeting at which ministers took turns berating her, at times in sexist terms, according to three attendees who insisted on anonymity. They suggested that she belonged with her “friends” in the streets, that if the protesters had been right-wing, she would have cracked down on them brutally, that perhaps she was too busy doing her hair.
After more than four hours, the people said, someone asked what she had to say for herself. “I heard everything,” she said, and then she walked out.
Mr. Netanyahu’s office did not respond to repeated requests for comment. A spokeswoman for Ms. Baharav-Miara declined to comment.
Refusing to take the bait was characteristic of Ms. Baharav-Miara. Those who know her say she rarely shows vulnerability to anyone outside a small circle of friends and relatives.
Fortitude may even be in her DNA. Her grandfather was a Zionist pioneer in prestate Palestine, and in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, her father fought in a battle in which more than 40 fellow soldiers were killed while retreating under fire from the Arab Legion.
She also watched her husband, a fighter in the domestic security agency, the Shin Bet, battle A.L.S. He died last year. Two former colleagues said everyone knew about her husband’s illness but she never discussed it.
“She is very strong,” said Avichai Mandelblit, her predecessor, who was appointed under a previous Netanyahu government and later indicted him. “She will not be broken.”
War Intervenes
The Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel and Israel’s ensuing war with the militant group in Gaza forced a pause in the judicial overhaul. The government, humbled by the biggest security failure in Israel’s history, struggled to respond.
The war stretched the military, forcing the country to call up tens of thousands of reservists and making the exemption from the military draft for ultra-Orthodox men an enormous political issue. After that exemption expired in June 2023, Ms. Baharav-Miara enraged the government by insisting that it pass a new one or start conscripting yeshiva students.
She was forcing the government to choose between antagonizing a majority of Israelis who serve or the ultra-Orthodox minority without whose support the government would most likely collapse.
Despite the war, Mr. Netanyahu and his coalition eventually resumed their effort to overhaul the system of checks and balances. They pushed legislation and issued directives to sideline the attorney general and other legal advisers; took steps to aid friendly media and pressure outlets they saw as adversaries; and sought to strip the attorney general of control over internal investigations of the police and prosecutors. Ms. Baharav-Miara resisted each of these moves, often speaking out publicly.
As they watched President Trump replace naysayers in the federal government, Mr. Netanyahu and his ministers aimed to do the same, by trying to oust the head of the Shin Bet, who eventually quit, and then firing Ms. Baharav-Miara.
Ms. Baharav-Miara sued to block her dismissal, and the Supreme Court backed her up. The government assailed both her and the court as standing in the way of democracy.
Critics saw it differently. “There are two pearls in the Israeli necklace,” said the retired Supreme Court president Aharon Barak, 90, who is widely credited with the international prestige afforded to Israel’s high court but seen on the right as a symbol of judicial overreach. “One is the attorney general, the other is the High Court of Justice. This government wants to destroy both pearls.”
Bracing for a Climactic Showdown
On the Israeli right, critics of Ms. Baharav-Miara generally argue that, because she so often opposes the government, her advisory role has inappropriately morphed into a veto power.
Gideon Sapir, a constitutional law professor at Bar-Ilan University, recently told the newspaper Makor Rishon that she should have quit long ago.
“If there is a complete lack of trust on the part of the government in the attorney general — there is no dispute on one issue or another but a complete lack of trust — that’s the moment you have to go,” he said.
Ms. Baharav-Miara also has critics on the Israeli left, mainly over her failure to curb what they see as the government’s excessively harsh treatment of Palestinians.
She chose to defend the government over its conduct in the war that followed the Oct. 7 attacks, its treatment of detainees and its refusal to let journalists into Gaza, according to Michael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer. She also declined to prosecute officials and other public figures who openly called for committing what Mr. Sfard said would be war crimes in Gaza.
“Baharav-Miara for eternity will not only be the one courageous woman that stood against the authoritarian process, against fascism,” he said. “But she will also be the attorney general of the annihilation of Gaza, the starvation of Gaza, the torture of Palestinian prisoners. She is all of that.”
No one has been in more intense and sustained conflict with her than Mr. Ben-Gvir, the far-right national security minister. In court filings, she has accused him of going beyond policymaking to involve himself improperly in police promotions and operational decisions — such as which protests to allow and which to suppress — in furtherance of a highly political agenda.
Mr. Ben-Gvir, whose office did not respond to repeated requests for comment, contends that the attorney general really wants to silence right-wing voters.
In an attempt at compromise last year, Ms. Baharav-Miara laid down guidelines to ensure police independence. After she said that Mr. Ben-Gvir had ignored them, she sued in January to force Mr. Netanyahu to fire him, a case that is on hold until after the election.
For now, Mr. Ben-Gvir remains in his job, and there are worries about how he might deploy the police on Election Day.
Would officers act to intimidate Arab voters, or let allies of the government resort to violence? Would they declare it unsafe to open polling places in certain areas?
And what if the government’s efforts to normalize noncompliance with court rulings culminate at election time in a constitutional crisis in which the police back the prime minister over the Supreme Court?
For their part, right-wing leaders accuse the opposition of plotting to steal the election, too, and polls show that a majority of Israelis are worried about the integrity of the voting.
All of which points toward a potentially climactic moment for the attorney general, and for the country.
Ms. Baharav-Miara, who has expressed shock over how fragile Israel’s democracy has turned out to be, has begun calling this “money time,” according to two associates who insisted on anonymity to describe private conversations.
She refuses to contemplate what Israel would look like if the democracy she grew up in becomes unrecognizable.
Several friends said she had recalled how in one of Israel’s wars in her youth, she knew families who packed their things and flew abroad, fearing the worst. Some Israelis now talk of emigrating depending on the election’s outcome.
Ms. Baharav-Miara is not giving that a second’s thought, she has told friends: “I don’t ever pack a suitcase.”
