During a hearing held Sunday at the Petach Tikva Magistrate’s Court on the arrest of one of the settlers who participated in a protest outside a Shin Bet facility, Judge Zohar Dibon-Segal sharply rebuked representatives of the Shin Bet after they made an especially unusual request—to bar attorneys from the right-wing Honenu legal aid organization from representing more than one suspect in the same case.

Judge Dibon-Segal did not mince words. She described the Shin Bet’s request as a step that severely undermines the integrity of due process, stating, “This could compromise the fairness of the legal proceedings and, at best, is an attempt to obtain a contradictory judicial ruling. When such a drastic measure is requested—namely, to prevent a person from being represented by an attorney—the investigating authority must provide substantial justifications for it, and that must come before any other discussion takes place.”

“The court expressed deep astonishment at the request in itself, which is, by all accounts, extraordinary. To the best of my knowledge—and I say this with all due caution—I am unaware of any similar request ever being made, even in far more serious cases that have come before this court, including cases involving terrorists who harmed Israeli civilians after October 7.”

About two months ago, around 20 settlers were arrested after demonstrating outside a Shin Bet facility to protest what they described as “the organization’s persecution of the settler community.” The detainees were held under harsh conditions, and some were even denied access to legal counsel for several days.

Following legal action by the Honenu organization, all the detainees were eventually released without indictments being filed.

At the same time, a gag order was issued on the details of the incident in which the settlers were suspected, and the Shin Bet took the extraordinary step of issuing an order barring Honenu lawyers from representing more than one suspect. That order was ultimately rejected by the Petach Tikva Magistrate’s Court.

Attorney Avichai Hajbi of the Honenu organization, who represented one of the detainees at the hearing, welcomed the judge’s remarks, saying, “The court has said out loud what we have all known for a long time—that when it comes to Jewish detainees, the Shin Bet plays by its own rules. It’s time someone reminded the Shin Bet that no organization is above the law—not even one that claims to act in the law’s name.”

This is not the first time that the Shin Bet has targeted the Honenu organization. Last month, Shmuel Meidad, the head of the Honenu legal aid organization, revealed that he was warned by a senior official that the Shin Bet had collected personal information about him after a senior official in the agency decided to “take Honenu down.”

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)