When Justice Minister Amir Ohana ascended to the Knesset dais Nov. 6 with a sheet of paper in hand, no one present attributed any importance to what seemed like a routine event. As they quickly learned, he would be dropping a bombshell. Much to everybody’s shock, the justice minister took advantage of his parliamentary immunity to give a detailed account of the unusual methods used by police interrogators against Nir Hefetz, a state witness in the case against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A court had placed a gag order on the information, yet Ohana was sharing it from the Knesset dais on live TV. In so doing, despite the gag order, he was revealing intimate details about Nir Hefetz’s personal life and the life of someone close to him.

Ohana did this just a few weeks before Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit announced his decision in the various criminal cases involving Netanyahu. It was his attempt to prove what he and the prime minister have long believed: Netanyahu will not receive a fair trial, because Israel’s law enforcement agencies are waging a malicious campaign against him.

Ohana’s toxic attack on the police and the state attorney’s office had an immediate political effect. It hacked away at any chances, slim as they were, to form a unity government. As one senior member of the Blue and White party told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, “It is true that a large part of the Blue and White base doesn’t want another round of elections, but they don’t want Netanyahu even more. That is why, when something like that happens, there is even less of a chance that [Blue and White leader Benny] Gantz will confer his seal of approval on Netanyahu.”

In fact, it wasn’t long before Gantz tweeted: “The troubling behavior of the Justice Minister is only further proof that the Prime Minister must not be allowed to serve while he is under indictment.” While this tweet reflected his values, it was also a political tweet directed at his electoral base. They had voted for Blue and White in two elections, one right after the other (April and September), in the hope that the party would finally bring an end to the Netanyahu government. These are voters who see Ohana and walk away convinced that the country is being run by the mob. They consider the justice minister himself to be nothing more than a consigliere, working on behalf of the prime minister, by violating the gag order. He may even have received his instructions from the prime minister himself, or possibly from Netanyahu’s son Yair.