The depth of the corruption of Israel’s judicial system is truly disturbing, with the latest revelation showing that the State Attorney’s Office’s indictment against Dr. Michael Ben Ari ahead of the elections for the 21st Knesset was politically motivated.

In 2019, the High Court banned Ben-Ari from running for the 21st Knesset as part of the Otzma Yehudit party after the State Attorney’s Office charged him with 57 counts of “incitement to racism.”

In the recent hearing on Dr. Ben-Ari’s appeal in the Lod District Court, Judge Ron Solkin ruled that the State Attorney’s Office pressured the police to expedite its investigation into Ben-Ari due to the elections, a process that ultimately led to his disqualification from the 21st Knesset. In unusually sharp criticism of the State Attorney’s Office, Judge Solkin also ruled that during the investigation, prosecutors from the State Attorney’s Office dictated the questions the police were to ask, rather than allowing the investigating authority to conduct the investigation independently.

Dr. Ben Ari, a candidate on Moshe Feiglin’s Zehut Party list for the 26th Knesset, told B’Sheva: “In other words, the State Attorney’s Office used the police to advance a political agenda. They told the police: ‘To disqualify Ben Ari, we need critical mass—collect the material for us.’ That is blatant political interference in Israel’s political system by the prosecuting and investigating authorities.”

“They never did this before, not against [Arab MKs] Azmi Bishara or Ahmad Tibi—they always stood by people like them,” Ben-Ari noted. “Section 7A states that anyone running for the Knesset must recognize Israel as a Jewish state. None of them recognize Israel as a Jewish state, yet no one seeks to disqualify them. To disqualify me, they searched with candles and under the floorboards.”

“They brought 40 publications to the petition seeking to disqualify me in the High Court. But when they came to file the indictment, only nine remained out of those 40. The ‘critical mass’ they claimed simply didn’t exist. It was all lies—a witch hunt carried out through the unlimited power of then-State Attorney Shai Nitzan and his gang in the State Attorney’s Office,” Ben Ari said, adding that he believes that Nitzan treated the indictment against him as a personal project.

B’Sheva journalist Yoni Rotenberg responded to the report by stating: “Let’s simplify what this article is saying for a moment: A district court judge—who is not suspected of being sympathetic to Ben Ari—states unequivocally that the State Attorney’s Office used a criminal investigation for political purposes. Yes, that’s what he’s saying: according to the ruling—prosecutors pressed the police to speed up the investigation into Ben Ari so there would be a case to present to the Central Elections Committee and the High Court to disqualify him from running for the Knesset. This is what a dying democracy looks like.”

It should be noted that following investigations by the “Choosing Life Forum,” which represents bereaved families, it was recently revealed that Mansour Abbas’s Ra’am party— the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in Israel — transferred funds to the military wing of Hamas and promoted terror content. Following the publication, the Registrar of Associations and the Official Receiver petitioned the Lod District Court, and Judge Merav Ben‑Ari ordered the NGOs closed. Ben‑Ari noted that the Reform Movement and prosecution officials who rushed to disqualify him for ‘racist statements’ are silent when it comes to Mansour Abbas.

Dr. Ben Ari said in an interview with Galey Yisrael: “This decision opens Pandora’s box. I knew that box was there—I just needed the smoking gun itself. It’s written in very, very clear language. The entire objective of the State Attorney’s Office wasn’t merely to disqualify me—it was solely to disqualify me. The State Attorney’s Office adopted a political position and became a kind of branch of Balad or a branch of the Reform Center. They decided they didn’t want Ben Ari in the Knesset. Shai Nitzan wanted to remove me from the political system, and together with an entire group within the State Attorney’s Office, they lied every step of the way.”

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)