Mossad appointment case: A-G to submit classified material not presented at hearing

Gofman, currently Netanyahu’s military secretary, was approved last month by the Senior Appointments Advisory Committee and is scheduled to take office on June 2 for a five-year term.

At the center of the case is the Elmakayes affair, involving allegations that then-minor Elmakayes was used in an IDF-linked influence operation connected to the 210th Division while Gofman commanded it.

The court has not yet ruled on the petitions. Following Tuesday’s hearing, Justices Dafna Barak-Erez, Ofer Grosskopf, and Alex Stein ordered that the full protocols and materials placed before the advisory committee be submitted for their review.

They also ordered an affidavit from Brig.-Gen. “G,” the former head of the IDF Intelligence Directorate’s Operational Activation Division, regarding a May 2022 inquiry connected to the affair, including an alleged clarification he held with Gofman on the eve of Elmakayes’s arrest.

Thursday’s urgent request was submitted by the Attorney-General’s Office and signed by Deputy Attorney-General Gil Limon. According to the filing, a request to the legal advisory body attached to G’s current employer, made for the purpose of obtaining the affidavit, revealed additional material “that must be brought before the court” and that, the state argued, should have been presented by Gofman himself during the hearing.

Attorney Harel Arnon, representing Netanyahu and the government, later on Thursday requested that the court lift the confidentiality restrictions on the materials submitted by the Attorney-General's Office, calling for “a transparent process.”

The court granted the request but clarified that the new material may not be used to expand the case beyond the existing issues before it.

The justices wrote that the submission “will not serve as a change of front or as an addition to what has already been presented,” meaning that the material may be submitted only in relation to the Elmakayes affair and not as a basis for introducing a new line of argument against the appointment.

The decision also stated that, if possible, a paraphrase approved for publication should be attached to the classified material.

According to Channel 13, the information concerns conversations Gofman allegedly had with G’s superiors at his current place of employment that could affect G’s future there. The report could not be independently verified.

The Attorney-General’s Office has opposed the appointment, arguing that the Elmakayes affair casts a shadow over Gofman’s integrity and that the decision to appoint him suffers from extreme unreasonableness.

At Tuesday’s hearing, however, the justices pressed the petitioners and the state on the evidentiary gap between the claims regarding the affair and what Gofman knew at the time. Stein also questioned what legal source required the advisory committee to hear directly from Elmakayes, noting that the court was not itself acting as a trial court tasked with determining disputed facts.

The advisory committee, by contrast, has asked the court to dismiss the petitions. It has argued that its majority decision was well-founded and that the affair did not amount to an integrity defect warranting disqualification.

Committee chairman and former Supreme Court president Asher Grunis was the lone dissenting voice in the committee, finding flaws related to the Elmakayes affair and concluding that it was not appropriate to appoint Gofman as Mossad chief.

The petitions remain pending as the court reviews the advisory committee materials, G’s affidavit, sealed investigative materials submitted by Elmakayes’s lawyers, and the additional classified material now permitted for submission.