According to the petitioners and the Attorney General, the totality of these data shows that the selection of Ms. Haetzni-Cohen, Mr. Malka and Maj. Gen. (res.) Ron-Tal to the committee stemmed from familiarity with their previous positions and the expectation that through these appointments it would be possible to ensure the desired result - a recommendation to close the station.
- In response to this argument, counsel for the Government Respondents argued that the mere fact that a person had expressed a position in the past on the subject under discussion does not, in and of itself, constitute an impediment to his appointment to membership in an advisory committee. According to him, if it had been said otherwise, this would have negated the possibility of appointing professionals and those with experience in the relevant field to public positions, since professionals are presumed to have expressed their expertise and professional positions over the years.
In my view, too, a previous statement on the subject that the committee will deal with, by one of its designated members, does not justify the disqualification of his appointment. Counsel for the Government Respondents is correct in his argument that if we had said otherwise, it would have been difficult to appoint professionals to public office, since it is not easy to find an expert who has not publicly expressed his views regarding his areas of expertise. For this reason, it was ruled that a distinction must be made between the expression of Previous Opinion and the expression of Prejudice. The President noted the A. Barak Noting that:
"The rule disqualifies a person from membership in the committee if that person has formulated for himself a (final) position on the subject of the committee's deliberations, in such a way that as far as he is concerned, there is no longer any point in the usual continuation of the committee's deliberations ('the game is addicted'). The rule shall apply where a member of the committee should not be expected to be impartial. To be precise: the rule does not prohibit membership in the committee of a person who, upon his appointment, has his own opinions on the subject of the committee. Experts are often appointed to the committee, who have professional opinions on matters that are the subject of the committee's deliberations [...] The prohibition on committee membership applies where the committee member has a prejudice, which is unlikely to change during the committee's deliberations. The disqualification of a member of a committee to serve in a place where the member's opinion is "locked" and is not "open" to persuasion and change" (High Court of Justice 1356/96 Ben David v. Prime Minister of Israel, IsrSC 50(1) 661,666 (1996); and see also: High Court of Justice 3751/03 Ilan v. Municipality of Tel Aviv-Jaffa, IsrSC 59(3) 817,830 (2004) (hereinafter: the Ilan case); Barak-Erez, vol. 1, at p. 547).