Justice Mazuz: Man under indictment establishing government - a moral failure - Inside Israel

Supreme Court publishes full arguments in decision not to prevent Netanyahu from forming government while under indictment.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday issued the full verdict in which the 11 judges decided that there is no impediment preventing a prime minister accused of criminal acts from forming a government.

Judge Meni Mazuz was the most troubled by the prospect of a prime minister forming a government while under indictment, arguing that "the reality that a man who has been accused of criminal offenses against the purity of virtue establishes and presides over a government, raises a public-moral difficulty that is difficult to overstate."

"Such a reality reflects a social crisis and a moral failure of society and the political system in Israel," Mazuz argued.

Justice Yitzhak Amit justified his decision, stating that "intervention in a decision establishing the executive branch is like a full-fledged conflict with the will of the voter as expressed in the vote of his representatives in the Knesset. In practice, the rejection by the court of a person who was elected prime minister by a majority vote in the Knesset would be a constitutional nightmare that may plague the court and put it in the center of a political storm."