Avigdor Feldman

Feldman was born in Tel Aviv in 1948, the son of a bookbinder and a housewife.[6] He grew up in the city's Florentin neighborhood and attended religious schooling before enrolling at Ironi Zeitlin High School, from which he was expelled in 11th grade.[6] He described himself as nonreligious and anarchistic as a student.[6]

During his military service, Feldman was initially assigned as a sailor but was reassigned after the military deemed him security-unreliable. He spent much of his service as a shoe inspector, deciding whether soldiers' footwear had worn out sufficiently to warrant replacements—a role he recalled with wry humor, describing himself as "quite compassionate."[6] He began studying law during his service, drawn to Tel Aviv University because it offered law classes in the afternoon.[6]

After completing his legal studies, Feldman interned with attorney Amnon Zichroni and worked alongside him for nine years.[6] In 1984 he pursued a master's degree at American University in Washington through a New Israel Fund program for Israeli lawyers, then returned to work for a year at the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. He developed the organization's litigation practice before opening his own office.[6]

Feldman qualified as a lawyer shortly after the Yom Kippur War. He went on to co-found B'Tselem with Yossi Sarid and Dedi Zucker, serve on the board of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, and establish the Litigation Center of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.[1]

A landmark case in his career was HCJ 5100/94, a petition brought by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel challenging General Security Service interrogation practices. Feldman and co-counsel Ronit Robinson represented the petitioner before Israel's Supreme Court sitting as the High Court of Justice.[3] In its September 1999 judgment, the Court held that the GSS lacked legal authority to use methods including shaking, the "Shabach" position, the "frog crouch," and sleep deprivation beyond what interrogation inherently required.[3]

The Court distinguished the possible post-factum availability of the Penal Law's necessity defense from advance authorization for such practices. It held that necessity could potentially be considered in decisions about prosecution or at trial, but could not itself authorize interrogation directives.[3] The security context described by the Court was acute: 121 people had been killed and 707 injured in terrorist attacks between January 1, 1996, and May 14, 1998.[3]

Among the cases Feldman has highlighted, he identified the Supreme Court's Alon Moreh decision as the happiest moment of his career. He recalled appearing alongside Amnon Zichroni and Elias Khoury before a panel led by Justice Moshe Landau, which accepted the petition and, in Feldman's characterization, established that privately owned Palestinian land could not be expropriated for settlements. He observed that settlement construction subsequently shifted to public land.[7]

Feldman also represented the association New Discourse, known as the East Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow, in a petition challenging Israel Land Administration Council decisions that provided preferential arrangements for changing agricultural land use. The High Court accepted the petitions and voided the decisions as unreasonable.[8] Feldman described the ruling as the one most significant to him personally, saying it established a principle of distributive justice.[7]

Feldman represented Mordechai Vanunu at least as early as 2006, when he challenged prosecution evidence at a Jerusalem Magistrates Court hearing over charges that Vanunu had violated post-release restrictions by giving interviews to foreign media.[4] A 2015 report identified Feldman as Vanunu's long-term lawyer and reported Vanunu's statement that Feldman worked for him voluntarily.[9]

In early 2007, Feldman joined former president Moshe Katsav's defense team after Prof. David Libai withdrew.[5] Feldman later described his work as a lengthy pre-indictment hearing rather than a plea bargain and said he would have preferred the matter to go to court.[6] A Globes profile also lists petitions connected to Sabra and Shatila, Jenin Jenin, and the deportation of Hamas activists to Lebanon among his legal work.[7]

In the Amiram Ben-Uliel appeal concerning the 2015 terrorist arson murders of the Dawabshe family in Duma, Feldman and co-counsel Yehoshua Resnick argued that the appeal should address the admissibility of Ben-Uliel's confession in light of allegations of torture or enhanced interrogation, rather than simply disputing whether the confession was true.[10]

Feldman said he met Ben Zygier in his cell at Ayalon Prison in Ramle two days before Zygier's death in December 2010. He described Zygier as rational and focused but deeply stressed, said Zygier denied the serious charges against him and was considering a plea bargain being negotiated with senior state prosecutors, and emphasized that Zygier had been charged but not convicted.[11]

Feldman participated in the Institute for National Security Studies' October 2021 conference session "Transparency versus National Security: Whom Should We Believe?" The session examined whether Israeli society suffers from excessive secrecy and how to balance national security with democratic transparency.[12]

Feldman's professional standing has received recognition inside and outside Israel. He received the Robert F. Kennedy Peace Award.[7] In a 2007 industry survey reported by Globes, 29% of respondents with an opinion selected him as Israel's most highly regarded litigator, ahead of Yaakov Weinroth at 17% and Ram Caspi at 12%. He was also selected as the leading criminal lawyer, with 24% compared with Shashi Gaz's 23%, a margin within the survey's 4.5% maximum sampling error.[13] A U.S. district court recorded that both parties described Feldman as "one of the most distinguished and prominent civil rights attorneys in Israel."[2]

Beyond the courtroom, Feldman has written for Israeli publications including Theory and Criticism, Zmanim, Ha'Ir, and Hadashot. He contributed a regular column titled "Behind Closed Doors" (בדלתיים פתוחות) to a Haaretz supplement; the catalog description of his collected work characterizes the column as including sharp criticism of Supreme Court rulings.[1] He also taught a Tel Aviv University course on Franz Kafka's The Trial.[7]

The National Library of Israel identifies Feldman as the author of an essay about Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project. In it, he recalls carrying the English translation in his backpack for years and becoming so anxious after forgetting it on a trip that he bought a replacement copy, leaving him with two.[14]

In 2024, Pardes published a 505-page Hebrew collection, also titled בדלתיים פתוחות, gathering Feldman's writing from roughly 40 years. The collection addresses court proceedings, Supreme Court and High Court of Justice decisions concerning the occupation in the territories, prominent criminal cases, judicial reform, and the war that began on October 7.[1] Feldman described his approach to observing the courts as that of an ethnographer: "as if I had penetrated dense jungles into a hidden settlement of natives."[1]

Several of Feldman's prominent cases have involved contested factual or legal claims. In U.S. proceedings concerning Mohammed Salah's Israeli military conviction, Feldman submitted a declaration arguing that Israeli military courts generally did not meet accepted standards of fairness. The court also considered a contrary expert opinion that the conviction met generally accepted fairness standards, setting out competing assessments rather than adopting Feldman's view as an uncontested conclusion.[2]

Feldman testified at deposition about procedural safeguards in Israeli military courts, including access to counsel, the right to appeal, and the requirement for corroborating evidence beyond a confession. He also recounted that Salah had described conduct that might be interpreted as torture. Feldman testified that he had personally witnessed no misconduct and that Salah showed no physical signs of abuse when they met.[2]

In the Roman Zadorov case, Feldman argued at a 2019 panel that police had no forensic evidence connecting Zadorov to the crime scene and alleged that investigators falsely told Zadorov that the victim's blood had been found on his tools. The State Prosecutor's Office disputed this account, stating that every available lead had been examined and that the investigation also relied on forensic findings and an informant.[15]

More broadly, Feldman criticized Israeli police practices in a 2014 interview, saying the police were "sick" and pursued easy solutions and shortcuts, including reliance on state's evidence. He also argued that criminal defendants must be treated as innocent at the beginning of a trial rather than presumed guilty from their appearance or perceived criminality.[16]

Feldman has stated his belief that defendants in both the Suleiman al-Obeid case and the Danny Katz murder case were innocent, although they were sentenced to life imprisonment following multi-instance proceedings.[7][6] In the Danny Katz retrial, he later expressed regret at having agreed to replace only one ill judge rather than demanding a new panel and a full retrial.[6] His representation of former president Moshe Katsav attracted public criticism as well as defenses of his professional role.[5] These positions remain Feldman's own assessments of contested criminal proceedings.