Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acted in conflict of interest when he took part in the cabinet discussion and vote approving Dr. Yifat Ben Hay-Segev as chair of the Second Authority for Television and Radio Council, Deputy Attorney-General Gil Limon said in a Friday letter to Yesh Atid MKs Karine Elharrar and Shelly Tal Meron.
The new letter followed a complaint by Elharrar and Tal Meron on Thursday, in which they asked Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara to examine Netanyahu’s role in the appointment. At the center of their argument was Netanyahu’s 2020 conflict-of-interest arrangement, which was later approved in High Court proceedings and limits his involvement in matters touching witnesses in his criminal trial.
In his response, Limon wrote that where the personal matter of a witness in Netanyahu’s criminal case is discussed specifically in a government ministry, the prime minister must avoid involvement. He added that if Netanyahu believed involvement was necessary, he was required to seek instructions in advance from the Attorney-General’s Office.
Limon said the purpose of the restriction is not only to prevent the exercise of governmental authority where the prime minister has a personal interest, but also to avoid concern that a decision benefiting or harming a witness could affect that witness, other witnesses, or the criminal proceeding itself, while also undermining public trust.
He wrote that Ben Hay-Segev was a prosecution witness in Netanyahu’s trial and appeared on the witness list attached to the original conflict-of-interest opinion. Limon further noted that after she deviated from her police statement during testimony, prosecutors sought to have her declared a hostile witness, after which the court allowed her police statements to be submitted. On that basis, he concluded that Netanyahu should have been barred from any role in the decision on her appointment.
According to Limon, before the cabinet meeting, he sent a letter to Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi and Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs asking that the matter not be brought to the government for discussion pending additional factual and legal checks.
But the cabinet protocol, he wrote, shows that the letter was presented to ministers, Netanyahu nevertheless decided to leave the item on the agenda and then participated in both the discussion and the vote. “In the circumstances described,” Limon wrote, Netanyahu “was in a conflict of interest,” and acted contrary to the binding opinion governing his conduct.
He added that the legal implications are now being examined and that the matter will also be presented to the court in the state’s response to a petition filed by the Union of Journalists in Israel.
Second Authority legal battle
The case has unfolded against a broader legal and public fight over the new composition of the Second Authority council. The Journalists’ Association petitioned the High Court against the appointments of Ben Hay-Segev as chair and of Kinneret Barashi and Haim Shine as council members, arguing that the moves create serious conflicts and threaten independent media regulation. Channel 12 also petitioned against Ben Hay-Segev’s appointment.
The Second Authority is the statutory body that regulates Israel’s commercial television and regional radio broadcasters, giving its chair and council significant influence over one of the country’s most politically sensitive arenas.
The Thursday complaint joins a growing challenge to Netanyahu’s involvement in media-related appointments while he remains on trial, focusing on the fact that Ben Hay-Segev testified in Case 4000, the Bezeq-Walla affair, in which Netanyahu is accused of advancing regulatory benefits in return for favorable coverage. Netanyahu denies the charges.
After Limon’s response, the two Yesh Atid MKs intensified their criticism. In a joint statement, they said that “while the country is burning, the prime minister is busy with political appointments of those who will oversee the media, in blatant violation of his conflict-of-interest arrangement,” and called the letter from the Attorney-General’s Office “an official stamp on improper conduct.”
In separate statements later Friday, Tal Meron said the affair amounted to “a severe blow to integrity and the rule of law,” arguing that Netanyahu had ignored binding legal opinions in order to advance interests overlapping with his criminal cases. Elharrar said Netanyahu “as usual thinks he is above the law,” and said she hoped the attorney-general would act to cancel “the appointment and all appointments” involving a breach of the conflict-of-interest arrangement.
For now, Limon’s letter does not itself void the appointment. But its significance lies in the unusually direct formulation of the state’s position: not merely that there was concern over Netanyahu’s participation, but that he should have been entirely barred from it and acted in violation of the arrangement binding him. Whether that conclusion leads to cancellation of the appointment, further court intervention, or some other legal consequence is likely to be the next stage in a fight that is no longer only political, but institutional and judicial as well.