Avi Himi, 64, Head of Israel’s Bar Association since June 19, 2019, was exposed by Channel 13’s Ayala Hasson who reported that he committed an indecent act against a young woman in a video call in the past year.
According to Hasson, the woman is an attorney who asked Himi for his recommendation to become a judge and depended on him for her career to advance.
According to the report, over the past year, Attorney Himi was in professional contact with the lawyer, and at one point she asked him to recommend her to become a judge.
Himi is a member of the Judicial Selection Committee which is one of the targets of Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s judicial reform.
As head of the bar association, Himi is a permanent part of the decision process in appointing the very judges that he may someday be facing in court. Currently, the 9-member committee includes 9 members, two of whom represent the bar association. The other members are three Supreme Court Judges, who enjoy an automatic veto together with the lawyers, against the rest of the committee: the Justice Minister, another cabinet minister, and two MKs.
According to Hasson’s report, when the young attorney asked for Himi’s recommendation, he changed his attitude toward her and started sending her personal messages. A few days after he had WhatsApped her that the recommendation was sent, he contacted her in a video call, and when she answered – he did what he did.
The young attorney kept a recording of the video meeting and consulted her lawyer. At some point, the video reached Ayala Hasson who chose not to show it but reported in living color what took place.
In his phone conversation with Hasson, she asked him to account for his indecent act in his bar association office, with the national flag behind him, Himi first said that it didn’t happen at the bar association and that he keeps flags in all his offices. But as the conversation continued, he remembered to accuse Hasson of persecuting him for his political views.
Recently, surprisingly, Attorney Himi announced that he will not run for another term as the head of the Bar Association. Also, his political position moved to the extreme left, a move which Eldad Yaniv, a panelist on Hasson’s show, suggested was part of his strategy to receive an “etrogization” from the mainstream media.
The term “etrogization” was coined by leftist commentator Amnon Abramovich during the late Ariel Sharon’s transformation from right to left after he was caught by the prosecution on suspicion of corruption. Sharon collaborated with the left and launched the 2005 Gush Katif expulsion. Abramovich, concerned that the media would ruin the expulsion by exposing Sharon’s corruption, called to treat and protect Sharon like an etrog, the choice fruit of the four species of Sukkot.
Himi became head of the bar association after his predecessor, Effi Naveh, was forced to quit after a scandal that came to be known as “sex for an appointment.”
