“We arrest these schmucks even without proof for several days,” to interrogate them under harsh conditions, the senior man says, in a recording aired Saturday.
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
The Shin Bet – Israel’s secretive internal security agency also known as the Shabak – came under fire Saturday after Channel 11 released a recording in which the head of the Shin Bet’s “Jewish Division” revealed that settlers are routinely arrested without evidence and held harsh conditions.
In the bombshell report, the official., A., can be heard telling the head of the investigation and intelligence unit of Judea and Samaria, Avishai Mualem, that it is not a problem to get arrest orders for people that the police have detained as “it’s handled between the office of the head of Shabak and the Defense Minister.”
When Muallem said that legally speaking he had to have the warrants within hours and would have to put the detainees in a cell, A. reassured him that the warrants would arrive and said “Yes, put them in a cell. If it were possible to detain them here for another 24 hours, we’d always be happy.”
Revealing that the agency consistently works in an illegal manner, he said, “We always want to detain them for questioning, as many as possible. See how a Shabak interrogation goes, we arrest these schmucks also without proof for several days.”
He added that Muallem should put the prisoners in “cells with rats.”
When Muallem asked what he could charge them with, A. responds, “First of all you could catch them in a car from Havat Gilad, maybe there was flammable material there, maybe they stink of fuel.”
The police commander then says, “Listen, forget that, if we don’t find anything what do we do? Arrest them for no reason?”
“Yes, yes, we’ve done this many times in the past, so how could it be that there are no detainees?” A. answers, saying the police should put up roadblocks on several roads in order to find settlers to arrest.
When Muallem asked where the army was, A. told him the IDF was busy now in Lebanon and Gaza and that the soldiers patrolling Judea and Samaria were often from the region and were effectively pro-settler “militias.”
At a few points in the recording, Muallem warned of pushback saying: “They’ll tear us apart over this.”
The Prime Minister’s Office took aim at the Shin Bet following the report, saying that the behavior described was reminiscent of “dark regimes.”
“It is unacceptable under the rule of law for citizens to be arrested without evidence and placed in detention cells in an illegal and cruel manner,” said the Prime Minister’s Office in reaction to the revelation. “Such practices belong only in dark regimes where the secret service operates in a dangerous manner. There will be no dark shadow government within Israel.”
“The shocking recording…is a real danger to democracy,” and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “will demand a thorough examination of the activities of the Jewish department at the Shin Bet” as a result, the PMO said.
The Yesha Council of Judea and Samaria called for the immediate closure of the Jewish Division due to the revelation of this “crossing of a red line and a serious ethical and systemic failure” of the Shabak.
Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan called for A. to be fired due to his “shocking words…and the illegitimate arrests and loathing of soldiers from settlements.”
The Division as a whole should be shut down because it “has become a symbol of an extremist political body against the settlement movement, from [Shabak provocateur of the Rabin assassination] Avishai Raviv, through the inflation of administrative detentions to the ‘detentions with mice,’” he said.
Ariel Mayor Yair Sitbon noted that the recording exposed “a longstanding mindset” of the Shabak against “ideological and wonderful citizens who time and again prove their commitment to the state.”
He demanded that the region’s residents should be treated like all others in Israel, saying, “All civil events in Judea and Samaria should be conducted with the Israel Police, as is done in the rest of the country.”
The Shin Bet rejected the charges, saying in a statement, “Arrests of Israeli citizens suspected of terrorism are conducted only after thorough professional assessments and careful examination of intelligence information by relevant authorities, including senior officials. These actions are subject to independent judicial oversight.”
“Nonetheless,” it continued, “this does not justify the language used during the conversation,” and since the tone was “inconsistent” with the agency’s “professional values,” there would be an internal inquiry into the matter.
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