Deputy Supreme Court President Noam Sohlberg on Tuesday sharply rejected a second recent attempt by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to halt the selection of the Central Elections Committee’s new legal adviser.

Yifat Siminovski, an executive at Intel who previously served at the National Cyber Directorate and the Education Ministry, was unanimously chosen for the position on Monday, at a time of rising concern that generative AI could have a significant impact on this year’s Knesset election, which is scheduled to take place in October but could be held earlier.

Attorney Ilan Bombach, representing both Netanyahu and the latter’s Likud party, on Monday wrote a second letter in as many days to Sohlberg, who also serves as the chairman of the Central Elections Committee.

In the letter, Bombach questioned whether Siminovski’s background in cyber and technology qualified her for the role of legal adviser.

Sohlberg did not mince words in rebuking Bombach’s letter.

“I do not believe [your letter] is grounded in law or in fact,” the justice wrote in his reply. “Did you even read Siminovski’s CV and the documents she submitted to the committee?”

“In the future,” Sohlberg continued, “it would be appropriate to study the issue in full, based on a thorough and accurate evidentiary basis, before making baseless claims pertaining to an individual.”

Sohlberg, who has been a Supreme Court justice since 2012, is considered one of the court’s most conservative judges, though this has not endeared him to Netanyahu and the Likud party. Last year, the prime minister rejected outright a proposal to set up a state commission of inquiry for Hamas’s onslaught of October 7, 2023, in........

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