Talia Sasson

Biography

Talia Sasson was born in Israel in 1951. She worked for 25 years in the State Attorney's Office, initially in the Jerusalem District Attorney's Office and later in the State Attorney's Office. Among her responsibilities, she handled sensitive cases involving senior politicians and authored an interim report on unauthorized outposts, notably the "Bar-On Hebron" case.

Sasson, alongside Moshe Lador, who later became the State Prosecutor, and Yehoshua Reznik, the Deputy Attorney General for Criminal Affairs, recommended bringing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Shas party leader Aryeh Deri, and Justice Minister Tzachi Hanegbi to trial on suspicion of fraud and breach of trust. However, this recommendation was not accepted by the Government's Legal Advisor, Elyakim Rubinstein, and the cases were closed.

In the mid-1990s, following a government decision in November 1995, prompted by the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, Sasson headed an inter-ministerial team responsible for coordinating, planning, and supervising law enforcement activities against Israelis in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank).

She gained significant public attention after leaving the State Attorney's Office when, in 2005, at the request of then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, she authored the "Sasson Report," an interim report on unauthorized outposts in Judea and Samaria. The report detailed the establishment and legal status of these outposts.

After her tenure in the State Attorney's Office, in 2009, Sasson became the Chairwoman of the Israel Bar Association and also served as the Chair of the International Council of the New Israel Fund. She is a board member of the Council for Peace and Security, a public council engaged in promoting the Geneva Initiative.

Sasson is a staunch opponent of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. In 2012, at the "Israeli Left Conference" organized by the Peace Now movement, she referred to settlements as the "essence of evil in the State of Israel" and called on the public to understand why settlements are detrimental to the Zionist project.

In the run-up to the 18th Knesset elections in 2009, Sasson was placed seventh on the Meretz list but was not elected to the Knesset. She stated that she entered politics to combat the occupation and would continue to fight against settlements in the Knesset. In response, right-wing figures accused her of having a political agenda and claimed that her report on settlements was politically biased and not objective.

From 2015 to 2018, Sasson served as the President of the New Israel Fund. In 2018, the "If You Will It" movement launched a campaign against the New Israel Fund, including allegations against Sasson.

In December 2015, her book titled "According to Depth: Is the Victory of the Settlements the End of Israeli Democracy?" was published by Keter. The book addresses the Israeli settlement enterprise in the West Bank and its legal status.

In September 2017, a tweet by Amos Schocken following an article by Amira Hass, in which Schocken asked whether Israel is a "state of evil" or if it's merely an ethnic cleansing process, led to a response from Sasson stating, "It's both." Following a media uproar and condemnations, Sasson deleted the tweet and published a response article, explaining that her remarks were made in a moment of anger after reading the article.

In May 2019, Sasson, along with former senior officials from the State Attorney's Office and the Government Legal Advisor's office, signed a public statement opposing the legislation of the Override Clause, which aimed to expand parliamentary immunity for Israeli Knesset members.