Netanyahu Appoints Loyalists as Israel Elections Loom

Last Wednesday, 3 June, was surely one of the most shameful days in the Knesset’s 77-year history. Michael Rabello, the personal attorney of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was elected the country’s next state comptroller—the official who inspects, reviews, and audits government policy and conduct, and whose broad powers of inspection include the use of hundreds of lawyers, accountants, and other professionals under his authority.

Israeli law stipulates that the Knesset vote for this position must be carried out in secret, with MKs casting ballots alone behind a screen. Rabello’s rival for the post, former Supreme Court justice Yosef Elron, won the initial round of voting by a margin of 60 to 57—one vote short of the absolute majority needed in the 120-seat parliament. In defiance of a ruling by the Knesset’s legal advisor, Likud party whips then instructed their 68 MKs to photograph their votes behind the screen and many complied. Rabello won the second round of voting.

Rabello has been Netanyahu’s attorney for years, dealing with his personal and financial issues, and representing him before the Supreme Court. Most of Israel’s legal experts condemned his election as immoral and probably illegal, and the Supreme Court has been petitioned to disqualify his appointment. Yossi Verter, the chief political commentator of Haaretz, called Rabello “as corrupt and rotten as his client.” Even the Roman Emperor Caligula, Verter added with a touch of hyperbole, would have been bewildered by these events—and he appointed his horse Incitatus to be a senator.

Rabello’s election is only the most recent of Netanyahu’s absurd and/or inappropriate appointments of yes-men to key civil-service posts in recent weeks as elections loom—by law, Israelis must go to the polls before the end of October. All independent surveys conducted since the Hamas assault on southern Israel on 7 October 2023 have predicted that Netanyahu, who has governed Israel since 2009 (bar eighteen months in 2021–2), will lose. The prime minister is therefore doing what he can to shore up his hold on the state’s institutions. Many Israelis fear that he will use one excuse or another to defer the elections, or that he will try to subvert their integrity with underhand and illegal means (possibly including violence outside polling stations). Alternatively, he may follow the example set by Donald Trump and simply declare the results fraudulent and illegitimate if they don’t produce the result he wants.