Gali Baharav-Miara

Gali Baharav-Miara was born in Israel in 1959.

She holds a bachelor’s degree (1984) and a master’s degree (1990) in law from Tel Aviv University, where she served as a Teaching assistant and Adjunct professor.

In 1985, she joined the Tel Aviv District Attorney’s Office, where she served for about thirty years in a variety of positions, mainly in the fields of civil and administrative law. In 2002, she was appointed director of the administrative department of the District Attorney’s Office, and between 2007 and 2015 she served as Tel Aviv District Attorney, the largest civil division in the country. She handled the full range of civil issues, including labor disputes, land issues and defending against West Bank Palestinian civil lawsuits brought against the State of Israel.

After retiring from the State Attorney’s Office, she joined the law firm Tadmor & Co. as a consultant.

Since 2015, she has been a member of the Civil Service Commission’s search committee, giving her opinion to the government on senior appointments whose appointments require government approval.  She also served as a member of the Advisory Committee for the Administrative Courts Law and the Advisory Committee on Civil Procedure, chaired the Committee for the Examination of Appointments in Municipal Corporations in the Ministry of the Interior, chaired the Public Committee for the Examination of Private Investigations, and a member of the Administrative Courts Council.

In 2018, at the request of the State Attorney’s Office, she wrote an opinion defending Benny Gantz and Amir Eshel in a war-crimes case filed in a Dutch court by a Palestinian whose family members were killed in 2014 Gaza War. Her opinion was accepted, and the claim was dismissed.

In May 2019, along with former senior members of the State Attorney’s Office and the office of the Attorney General, she signed a statement opposing initiatives to grant the Knesset an override of the Supreme Court or to grant then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu immunity from prosecution based on his being head of the government.

In February 2022, Baharav-Miara was appointed Attorney General to replace Avichai Mandelblit. She is the first woman to serve in the post.

“It is fitting to appoint a woman for the job for the first time in the state’s history,” Justice Minister Gideon Sa’ar said. “But I am not recommending appointing lawyer Baharav-Miara for this reason, but because she is the best and most fitting candidate and also has the most diverse and rich professional managerial experience.”

“I intend to put the issue of public trust in the legal system at the top of my priorities,” she said at a welcoming ceremony in Jerusalem. “In recent days, there has been a worrying decline in public confidence in public legal advice and law enforcement systems… Various reasons for this come to mind, including the impact of external events and attacks on the judiciary and law enforcement. But it is wrong to attribute the decline in public confidence in the attorney general solely to external parties.”

Sources: Yonah Jeremy Bob, “Gov’t approves Baharav-Miara as next A-G - first woman in the post,” Jerusalem Post, (February 7, 2022).
“Vowing to prioritize public trust, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara takes office,” Times of Israel, (February 8, 2022).
“Gali Baharav-Miara,” Wikipedia.

Photo: Courtesy of Tadmor Levy & Co.