Since discussions began in the Constitution Committee on the bill to split the Attorney General's role, it seems two parallel campaigns are taking place regarding the proposal, both originating from the Attorney General's office. In the Constitution Committee, representatives of Gali Beharav-Miara explain why the split is dangerous, unnecessary, and harms the rule of law. However, at the exact same time, in the Supreme Court, her representatives from the High Court of Justice department provide the most convincing arguments in favor of the bill, which seeks, in its central part, to anchor the government's right to present its position in petitions filed against it.

In the cases involving the Civil Service Commissioner and Mossad head Roman Gofman in recent weeks, as well as a long line of additional cases from the past year (Mines, Kahlon, the Military Advocate General investigation, and others), the Attorney General clashed with the government's position and refused to defend it, only to discover that the court preferred to accept the position of the one she rejected. Through their failures, Beharav-Miara's people have repeatedly proven that the government's position must be heard, even when it contradicts the Attorney General's stance.

Beharav-Miara insists on imposing her position and loses. She loses and insists, insists and loses. And as this list of losses grows longer, the public becomes increasingly convinced that it is no longer possible to accept a situation where the keys to representing the government rest in the Attorney General's pocket.

Yet this week the Attorney General's unwitting campaign in favor of the bill expanded even to the district court hall where Netanyahu's trial is underway. The unusual occasion in which the judges reiterated their view that it would be better for the prosecution to remove the bribery clause from the indictment clarified that even in the criminal sphere, at least when it comes to elected officials, there is no place to leave the final word solely with the Attorney General.

Indeed, the bill, which reshapes the roles of the Attorney General and divides them among different players, stipulates that opening an investigation against an elected official will henceforth require the approval of the district court, and filing an indictment will require the approval of an external committee whose members do not include prosecution officials. Until this week it was still possible to debate whether this was necessary. But after the latest farce, it is much harder to argue that in the most sensitive cases - those that could drag an entire country into a political maelstrom - there is no room for an external oversight mechanism over the prosecution's discretion.

What is almost incomprehensible is the relative silence with which the judges' announcement this week was received, an announcement that once again sent a very strong signal that the bribery charge was and remains without any foundation. It is important to understand that this is not only what appears to be a resounding acquittal on the central charge in the indictment (without predicting the outcome on the other charges), but something far more exceptional. This is a situation in which the defendant should not even have been required to plead, because already at the end of the prosecution's case the elements of the offense had not been proven, even prima facie. This is a rare event in any criminal trial, and all the more so in the flagship case brought by the state against a sitting prime minister.

The media, for the most part, will continue to criticize the law to split the Attorney General's role. Yet in many respects, it is precisely its failure to criticize this institution that has turned this law, for many, from a controversial proposal into an idea that is increasingly difficult to oppose.

For three full years they continued to conduct a trial on the bribery charge, despite the judges' clear statement, and tried to explain that this was not exactly what was said or that perhaps another interpretation was possible. They even hoped there that the defense case would complete for the prosecution what it had failed to prove itself. Netanyahu, they hoped, would do the work for them. He would wrap the rope around his neck and tighten it. Many legal commentators echoed this nonsense, and even far more serious figures in the legal world, such as former Supreme Court President Aharon Barak, lent their professional reputation and explained with straight faces that this was a reasonable possibility.

This week, after Netanyahu's cross-examination ended and it became clear that with regard to the bribery offense there is nothing because there was nothing, and this time with the file, the central insider discourse, through its familiar representatives in the media, channeled itself into one of two main responses.

The first tried to downplay the event. According to the speakers, it was clear that the bribery offense no longer existed. For some reason, none of them felt the need to explain why they did not criticize the fact that for three years a trial was conducted on a bribery offense that they claimed was clearly nonexistent. The second response acknowledged that there is a serious failure here, but quickly shifted the blame to the judges. Its starting point was that Netanyahu is guilty of bribery anyway. If the judges say otherwise, it means they are simply trying to shorten the trial.

One must pause for a moment to understand the degree of instrumentality in this attitude toward the district court judges. As long as the judges provide the desired outcome, their words are doctrine from Sinai. But the moment they undermine the desired narrative, they become a problem. The goal is not to save the trial, but to save the narrative. Netanyahu is guilty until proven otherwise. And perhaps even if proven otherwise.

When Netanyahu's trial is mediated to the Israeli public in this way, of course no one in the Ministry of Justice bothered to explain what is happening here. And it is not that they do not know how to mediate themselves to the public. After all, when Mandelblit needed to convince that there was no choice but to file an indictment against the prime minister, and without any precedent in Israeli law for such a strange bribery offense, they did know how to organize an impressive press conference there. Now, when the bribery tree fell in the forest, it remained remarkably silent.

They were so quick to cover up the Attorney General's colossal failure that they immediately began to focus on the fact that Netanyahu might be convicted of breach of trust offenses, as if everything is fine. But this is not a soccer game in which a team finds itself down 2-0 and can encourage itself that it might still equalize, or even win. The possibility that at the end of the trial a conviction on another offense might be accepted does not heal the fact that the prosecution attached an extremely serious bribery charge to the prime minister and conducted a futile legal proceeding regarding it for years.

And it is not only the defendant's personal right that has been irreparably harmed. Public trust will not be restored until we understand how we reached this event, who is responsible for it, and how we will ensure that such a phenomenon does not recur.

The fact that those for whom the justice system is dear to their hearts are not the first to demand conclusions from those who led the prosecution to this failure is itself part of the explanation for it. The almost unlimited credit that tribal discourse grants to the advisory system allows it to operate this way and signals to it that the price of error is zero. When external criticism is almost nonexistent, the legislator is forced to create structural oversight mechanisms and decentralize the Attorney General's powers.

The media, for the most part, will continue to criticize the law to split the Attorney General's role. Yet in many respects, it is precisely its failure to criticize this institution that has turned this law, for many, from a controversial proposal into an idea that is increasingly difficult to oppose.