The Knesset’s ability to fulfill its role as a check on the executive branch depends on an overarching trust between the branches of government. Shielding MK Tally Gotliv from prosecution for a criminal offense committed deliberately and with full awareness of its illegality shatters that essential trust. It also drives public confidence in the Knesset – already lower than the Dead Sea – to an even more dismal depth.
With all due respect to political considerations, the coalition, with the ruling party at its helm, must come to its senses. It must put the public interest first, ahead of primaries or another opportunity to poke the justice system in the eye.
The Knesset has two roles: legislation and oversight of the executive branch – the government. Israel’s Knesset, the institution that represents the people, is weak. The government tramples it day in and day out, often imposing policy and legislation upon it.
Its ability to oversee the government is also badly impaired. Time and again, whether at the direction of ministers or for other reasons, the government simply “doesn’t count” the Knesset and fails to appear before the committees that summon it.
Part of the government’s reluctance to work with the Knesset stems from a lack of trust in MKs’ ability to act responsibly when sensitive information is involved. The Gotliv affair could become yet another mudslide, burying what remains of the Knesset’s capacity to function.
In brief: Gotliv knowingly committed a criminal offense under the Shin Bet Law by revealing the personal details of one of its agents – an offense punishable by three years in prison. When asked to remove the post from her social media accounts, she refused. Throughout the criminal proceedings opened in response to her conduct, she boycotted the law-enforcement authorities. Only after an indictment was filed against her did she turn to the Knesset and ask it to grant her immunity.
Immunity is a legal instrument designed to allow members of Knesset to act and fulfill their mission without being dogged by a constant fear that they might have committed a criminal offense. The law provides that immunity may be granted when an MK has committed an offense “in the course of fulfilling his or her duties,” or when the public interest would not be harmed.
Nearly three decades ago, Israel’s High Court already held that immunity should be granted only when the offense was committed in the heat of the moment and in the course of a lawful act. Thus, for example, when, in 1995, then-opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu disclosed a classified document in the heat of a speech from the Knesset podium, he was granted immunity from prosecution.
Gotliv’s case is plainly different. Acting on a self-appointed mission to expose supposed “betrayal” by the country’s security agencies before October 7, she embarked on a crusade in which she trampled the law with abandon. The offense she committed was not done “in the heat of the moment”; she repeated it again and again, while advancing the legally baseless claim that immunity would protect her from prosecution.
In the entire history of the Knesset, not a single MK has behaved in this way. Even in the few cases in which the Knesset has granted immunity, the conduct involved isolated acts that turned out to be criminal – as in the cases of Netanyahu, then-environment minister Tzachi Hanegbi (2010), and then-Knesset member Michael Gorlovsky (2005) – or acts whose criminal nature emerged only after the fact, as in the case of Haim Katz.
Granting immunity to MKs who choose to trample criminal law in the name of some real or imagined mission pushes lawmakers to compete not only with harsh rhetoric but also in committing criminal offenses to prove how devoted they are to their voters and how little they care for the rule of law.
In such circumstances, the probability of state agencies sharing sensitive or classified information with the Knesset, so that it can perform its oversight duty, is likely to approach zero. And rightly so.
With power comes responsibility. To be a ruling party means showing at least some measure of statesmanship, as well as a willingness to prefer the good of the country over the party or any individual MK – even when “the base” wants to humiliate the attorney general and the law-enforcement authorities.
The writer is director-general of JPPI, the Jewish People Policy Institute, and a senior lecturer in law at the Peres Academic Center.