Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the ministers of his government held a special meeting on Sunday morning with Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara, demanding answers about the selective treatment of the anarchist protesters who have been violating the law throughout the country and being treated with kid gloves by the police. Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai also participated in the meeting.
The discussion quickly grew heated as police data since the start of the protests were presented and the ministers hurled serious accusations at Baharav-Miara and enforcement officials. Out of 570 arrests made since the start of the protests for violating public order, only six indictments have been filed.
Ministers slammed Baharav-Miara for the selective enforcement, with police allowing anarchists to protest undisturbed despite regularly using violent means in the past to disperse protesters at Chareidi, Dati Leumi and Ethiopian protests. Additionally, for weeks, protesters have been allowed to close down the Ayalon Highway in Tel Aviv despite the fact that closing highways is forbidden by Israeli law.
Other ministers complained about left-wing protesters being allowed to demonstrate at extremely high volumes in close proximity to ministers’ homes while in the past, protesters outside the homes of former prime minister Naftali Bennett and former attorney-general Avichai Mandelblit were kept at a distance from their homes.
Minister Yitzchak Wasserlauf said: “The president of the Supreme Court said – freedom of speech is not the freedom to disable the State. During the Disengagement, 170 indictments were filed in one day. All citizens of Israel see the selective enforcement, and therefore I am raising a bright red flag here. It would not be pleasant if we had to petition the Supreme Court against the government’s Attorney-General who is not doing the job expected of her.”
Minister May Golan didn’t mince words, telling Baharav-Miara, among other things: “You will be remembered in history as a collaborator of those who burned the state.”
Minister Avi Dichter slammed Baharav-Miara for her silence about the calls for civil rebellion. “Civil rebellion is civil rebellion,” he said. “What will the ordinary citizen say in the face of your silence against these calls?”
In the middle of the discussion, Baharav-Miara made an outrageous statement: “There is no effective protest without harassment and disruption of public order.”
Netanyahu responded: “That is a shocking sentence!”
Transportation Minister Miri Regev addressed the issue of anarchists being allowed to protest at Ben-Gurion Airport: “Ben-Gurion is not a public area, it is an important security area for the State of Israel,” she said. “I will not accept harming security under any circumstances or Israel’s aviation routine or preventing flights or any kind of obstructions. I request to stop the selective enforcement – politics and personal opinions should be left out of the considerations. The public good, freedom of movement, and national security are more important.”
Justice Minister Yariv Levin spoke for ten full minutes, reading the Attorney-General’s protocols from the Disengagement period regarding blocking roads. “Until today, both during the Disengagement and during other protests, the roads were kept open and if they were blocked, it lasted for a very short time. The policy was clear: stop, evacuate, file charges. Today, roads are blocked as a matter of routine. Ben-Gurion looks like a battlefield.”
Regev then chimed in, telling Baharav-Miara: “If the Attorney-General supports and enables violation of public order, contrary to the positions of the Supreme Court and past attorney-generals, then what is the role of elected officials? What is the role of the government? If the Attorney-General decides everything but is unable to help the government function, then maybe she should be fired.”
Baharav-Miara did not have answers for the ministers’ complaints, although she did say at one point: “The government should be careful not to interfere in the affairs of the enforcement system.”
Minister Amichai Chikli retorted: “What chutzpah, Attorney-General Koach Kaplan.” [Koach Kaplan is the name of a leftist protest group.]
Netanyahu said: “The right to demonstrate within the framework of the law is a sacred right for every person and every sector and we strongly condemn any violence against demonstrators from one side or the other. This right is reserved both for the opponents of the reform and for its supporters. The government does not intend to limit this right. But the government does request a report on what the enforcement policy regarding the violations of the law that violate the basic rights of millions of citizens, and are carried out on an almost daily basis during the protests.”
“These violations are manifested in the blocking of main transportation arteries in the country, the disruption of the airport, in calls for non-payment of taxes, the harassment of public figures, in calls for rebellion and refusal with the goal of halting entire units in the army and violations of the law in many other areas. The public should receive an answer to the question of what the enforcement policy is and whether it is a uniform policy. Because in a democratic country, it is not possible to have one enforcement policy towards a certain sector and a second enforcement policy towards another sector. It is clear to everyone – selective enforcement is a fatal injury to democracy and a fatal injury to the rule of law.”
At the end of the meeting, the government instructed Baharav-Miara to provide clear instructions for the enforcement of the law at protests within a week.
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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One Response
dear ywn, can you post an article explaining both sides of the arguement instead of this endless bashing one side. kimat this whole artilce represents only one side and not the other…
of course the leftists are wrong, but there is always 2 sides to an argument, so lets hear themand not jsut call them all “anarchists” which is simply not true, they hold israeli flags and fear for the future of their country, even wrongly so…
the leftists hold that its a bad time to change the judicial system by netanyahu when he himself is under corruption charges by that very system, etc. why not explain BOTH sides of the debate. thats a lot more interesting and intelligent to people reading the news