The head of the Bar Association, Adv. Avi Himi announced this evening (Tuesday) that he will not run for the presidency of the bar in the upcoming elections in June 2023. Himi delivered the message to the members of the National Council and the employees of the bar.
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Hymi was elected in 2019 after the revelation of the suspicions against Efi Neve, the previous chairman of the bureau. “We carried out reforms, we promoted values of transparency and cleanliness of hands, we created an organizational and value culture that is completely different from the one that existed,” Hymi noted about his tenure.
The chairman of the Bar Association came out with a sharp criticism against the emerging government policy. According to him, “A few weeks ago I expressed my firm opinion loudly and clearly against the evil spirits blowing in our country. I did this, even when my opinion was not popular, to say the least, and even when I had to pay heavy personal prices for it. Asher Yegorti comes to us. These days, a number of shameful personnel laws have been passed in the Israeli Knesset (the Deri Law, the Smotrich Law, the Ben Gabir Law), which are in contradiction to the Zionist ethos, to the values stated in the Declaration of Independence and are in direct contradiction to our country being a Jewish and democratic country.”
Himi added that “my values, morals and social values that I was raised in the home of my parents Miriam and the late Yaakov Himi who immigrated from Wazan in Morocco and settled in the development town of Kiryat Shmona; as well as values that I acquired in the military boarding school next to the Reali Hebrew School in Haifa, from the beginning of my military service up to the rank of major in the reserves, in my studies at the Faculty of Law at Tel Aviv University, as well as in my daily work in the courtrooms for 32 years. These values conflict with the ‘values’ of the emerging new government, And they undermine Israeli democracy, the rule of law and the value of equality between all citizens of the country.”
Chimi announced that he will continue on this path until the end of his term in all legal fields. This is “to prevent the erosion of the fundamental values of Israeli democracy and human damage to all government institutions.”