Legal Advisor to the Prime Minister, Gali Baharav-Miara, responded today (Thursday) to the High Court of Justice regarding the petition against the decision to award the Israel Prize to Rishon LeZion Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef.
According to the attorney general, there is no room for the Supreme Court to intervene in the judges' committee's decision to award him the prize.
In her response, Rabbi Meara did not address the Chief Rabbi's statements and their merits, but rather wrote that according to the Supreme Court's own ruling, there is no legal basis for judicial intervention in the matter.
The attorney general noted that, based on the judges' committee's reasoning, its decision to choose Rabbi Yosef focused on his achievements in the field of Torah literature and Hebrew law and not on the kind of things that are the focus of the petitions against him.
The petitioners against awarding the Israel Prize to the Prime Minister are the 'Guardian of Israeli Democracy'. They petitioned because of his announcement in his weekly class about the recruitment of Haredim: "If they force us to go to the army, we will all go abroad. We will buy tickets or go there to Sukhotchev, the Unger."
"All these secular people who don't understand this, they need to understand that without the Torah, without the kollelim, without the yeshivas, there would be no existence, there would be no success for the army. Even so, the army doesn't always succeed... We saw how the army succeeded on Simchat Torah. "What is successful in the army is only thanks to the sons of the Torah. Gentlemen, everyone should say this with pride, and lift up their hearts in the ways of God, we deal with the Torah, and yes, the Torah is what protects us."
As you may recall, the Movement for Quality Government filed a complaint with the Judicial Complaints Commissioner - demanding that he act to remove the Chief Justice from office due to these remarks.