Israel’s cabinet received on Sunday an update from Attorney-General Gali Baharav Miara regarding enforcement policy over threats against public servants, calls for civil disobedience, blocking roads and what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed were illegal strikes.
“I wish to clarify a number of things,” Netanyahu said at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting.
“The right to protest within the law is holy for every person and every population, and we forcefully condemn violence against protestors from any side. This right is safeguarded both for those who oppose the reform and those who support it.
“The government would not conceive of limiting this right, but the government does wish to receive a report about what the enforcement policy is regarding violation of the law, that violates the basic rights of millions of citizens, and is happening on a near daily basis during the protests,” the prime minister said.
“In a democratic country there cannot be a situation where is one enforcement policy towards one population group, and a second enforcement policy towards a different population group,” Netanyahu added, referring to claims by many ministers and coalition MKs that the police was not enforcing the law against anti-judicial reform protestors with the same strictness that it has for other groups.
Protests against the judicial reform at Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv, May 27, 2023. (credit: AVSHALOM SASSONI/MAARIV)Politicians scapegoated during Knesset meeting
Ministers attacked Baharav-Miara during the meeting. According to Maariv, Justice Minister Yariv Levin read out protocols of government meetings during protests against the Disengagement from Gaza in 2005, which he claimed proved that the government then had acted more forcefully against protestors. Transportation Minister Miri Regev even called for Baharv-Miara’s removal, and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir argued that there were not enough arrests and indictments against protestors.
According to information provided at the meeting, 572 people have been arrested since the protests began in January in suspicion of attacking a police officer, out of which six indictments were handed down.
“On Wednesday, an [Israel Police] Superintendent stood in uniform and spoke about politics, and I thought there was nothing worse,” Ben-Gvir said at the closed-door meeting, according to his spokesperson. The national security minister was referring to Israel Police Tel Aviv Chief Ami Eshed’s speech last week, in which he accused the government of attempting to intervene in his operational judgement in treating the weekly protests, and of demanding that he apply more force against the protestors.
“Today I discovered that there is something more problematic, and that is to do politics without admitting that you are doing politics. I suppose that you believe yourselves, but reality is different,” Ben-Gvir said to the attorney-general and other officials present.
The cabinet concluded the meeting by demanding that the attorney-general lay out a “general plan,” including “methods of treatment in cases where the National Security Council warns against actions that can potentially harm national security.”
Responses to the cabinet meeting
Opposition leader MK Yair Lapid wrote in response to the cabinet meeting, “The cabinet today violently hazed the attorney general. The ugly assault by the ministers on Gali Baharav Miara, a fair gatekeeper who is only doing her job, is an example of what they are trying to do to Israeli society – thuggery instead of the rule of law, governmental violence against citizens and officials, [and an] aggressive annihilation of our democracy.”
Labor Party chairperson MK Merav Michaeli wrote, “The Israeli government invites the attorney general to a hearing where she will have to answer the question ‘how many protesters have been arrested and taken for interrogation’. This is not happening in Putin’s Russia, it is happening here in Netanyahu’s Israel.”
“But they don’t understand that they really are messing with the wrong generation,” Michaeli added. “There are protesters here who are not afraid. And we are not afraid. Israel is not a dictatorship and it cannot be turned into one. It will take time, but Israeli democracy will prevail,” she wrote.
The ‘Kaplan Force’ and Finance Minister Smotrich’s responses
The coalition of protest groups known as “Kaplan Force” put out a statement in response, “The attack that the attorney-general is undergoing is the direct continuation of the planned attack against the rule of law in the state of Israel, by the government of destruction.”
“The demand for police violence, to use executive tools to suppress the protests, while delegitimizing the gatekeepers, are a fundamental part of the coup d’etat. This is what happened in Hungary, Turkey and Poland,” Kaplan Force said, adding that it will “set out to defend Israeli democracy” on Tuesday, if the government followed through on its plan to pass the first reading of a controversial bill that is part of the reform late Monday night.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich did not participate in the part of the cabinet meeting dedicated to the protests, writing on Twitter that his time was “too important to waste on pointless discussions.”
“The attorney-general is in complete conflict of interest. The protestors are demonstrating to support her and to maintain the corruptive power that she and her colleagues in the judicial system have accrued over the years. Instead of wasting times on deaf conversation, the coalition must simply legislate. That is the best answer to the attorney-general’s conduct,” Smotrich wrote.
Comments are closed.