Supreme Court justices hearing the petition against changing the composition of the judges selection committee did not make life easy for the government and Knesset representatives who appeared last week to defend the law. "We are here to protect citizens' rights, and there will be no harm to the public if this law is halted," President Yitzhak Amit clarified to them. He called the child by name and stated explicitly: "We are in a regime change."

Justice Gila Canfy-Steinitz deviated from the script. "The Supreme Court annulled a Basic Law two and a half years ago; now we are asked to annul a Basic Law for the second time. It is impossible to describe the prices of this that sometimes appear after ten years, like advancing a reform," she said. Deputy President Noam Sohlberg also wondered whether court intervention was necessary here. But President Amit's words reflected the concerns of most members of the expanded panel.

Even in substantive cases they considered such as annulling the reasonableness cause, dismissing the Attorney General, dismissing Minister Ben Gvir, dismissing the Shin Bet chief and appointing his replacement, the Supreme Court justices did not appear so agitated. Some will say they are protecting their clique. The justices, for their part, will argue they are protecting everyone's clique - democracy, the rule of law and judicial independence.

President Amit and Justices Yechiel Kasher, Ruth Ronnen, Yael Willner, Ofer Grosskopf and Daphne Barak-Erez put their finger on what bothers them and keeps them up at night - reversing the basic condition for selecting a judge by preferring political and ideological inclination over professional skills. They had difficulty accepting Sohlberg's words, who believed the law's purpose is to encourage socio-economic, religious, ethnic and gender diversity, whose necessity is undisputed.

Some will say - for 20 years judges have been elected according to their ideological proximity to committee members. The fact that "Saar's law," which required electing a Supreme Court justice by special majority, led to always appointing two justices in a "deal" - conservative and liberal. But the deal makers, Supreme Court presidents and justice ministers, were careful to emphasize that first and foremost it involves an outstanding professional judge. This time the camera was brought into the Supreme Court hall. Government representative Dr. Yaakov Ben-Shemesh and Knesset representative attorney Yitzhak Bart did not even try to hide that the law's purpose is to bring in "our" judges. And if they are professionals - all the better.

Bart is an interesting case - a former member of the High Court of Justice department, considered the "General Staff reconnaissance unit" of the State Attorney's Office. He did not stand out there as a constitutional law expert, but as the Knesset legal counsel representative before the Supreme Court this is his bread and butter. Senior jurists, fearing the collapse of the state legal service as part of the regime revolution, see Bart's appearance as part of cutting the umbilical cord connecting the Knesset legal counsel to the Attorney General's office.

Although the Knesset legal counsel was established in the early 2000s as a separate entity from the Attorney General's office, and rightly so, the tradition was that these are two state bodies sharing the same commitment to the public interest and the same ethos viewing the Supreme Court as the exclusive interpreter of law and norms. Although the Knesset legal counsel often presented a separate interpretive position before the Supreme Court, it was a legal debate between two brothers.

No longer. "From the moment attorney Bart did not dispute government representative Dr. Ben-Shemesh's position that judges with 'ideological diversity' will be elected - a euphemism for political diversity - not only did he depart from traditional legal positions existing since the state's founding, but also from his own legal upbringing," says a senior Knesset source. "And here everything connects - the law to split the Attorney General's role was intended, among other things, to sever the link between him and the legal advisors of government ministries. By virtue of their subordination to the Attorney General's legal authority they constituted the spearhead of gatekeeping in Israel."

"This is the future awaiting us. Whatever the minister wants - will be. And the little citizen will remain without real protection. Equality before the law, integrity and individual rights are in great danger"

Knesset sources say that since this is such a central issue - judicial independence - the Knesset legal counsel should present all positions before the Supreme Court. "Bart and his boss, Knesset legal counsel attorney Sagit Afek, should have ensured the representation before the Supreme Court is neutral and professional so the opposition can also live with it in peace. Afek should have instructed him to represent a state body where opinions are divided, more than the government representative who represented the coalition alone."

Prof. Yaniv Roznai, a constitutional law expert at Reichman University, believes one line connects the Supreme Court case on the judges selection committee to the law splitting the Attorney General institution. "This is a split-elimination law of the Attorney General role, which will turn him from a professional and independent gatekeeper into a political consigliere whose legal opinion can be ignored," says Roznai. "In court only the position the government wants will be heard and not any other position. Moreover, this removes the first line of defense for the rule of law and human rights against the government - the court is the second line of defense and they are also trying to eliminate it."

"This also has dramatic implications for the array of legal advisors in government ministries who establish - through tens of thousands of decisions, directives, opinions, meetings and discussions - the rule of law in government work. The legal advisor to a government ministry is not the minister's private lawyer. The public is his client. He is there to ensure the minister and ministry act according to the law, without corruption or discrimination. He enforces the rule of law from within the ministry. And so the Knesset legal counsel should also act. He represents the Knesset as an institution. He is not the private lawyer of Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana. That is why I was so surprised to hear the Knesset representative argue before the Supreme Court regarding the breach of secrecy in the vote in which attorney Micha Rabilo was elected state comptroller. 'There is no norm,' attorney Bart claimed. 'There is no prohibition on filming with cameras or something similar.' But there is a norm. In the Basic Law and the State Comptroller Law it is determined that the elections are secret."

Thus, says Prof. Roznai, also in attorney Bart's defense of the judges selection committee law, "which will bring us a judicial system - not only a Supreme Court - completely unprofessional and political, while causing fatal damage to the principle of judicial independence. Bart defended the law fiercely without providing real answers to the justices' questions about the expected consequences. And this is the future awaiting us. Whatever the minister wants - will be. And the little citizen will remain without real protection. Equality before the law, integrity and individual rights are in great danger."