Dear Friends
We cannot stay quiet as 3 Jews have been put in administrative detention for half a year without any accusation against them
We call upon all to call the ministers and Knesset members and pass on a strong message of opposition to this scandal
Below is the translation of MK Bezalel Smotrich’s letter.that explains what is happening
Here is a link to Michael Freund’s article:Administrative detention and the assault on civil liberties http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Fundamentally-Freund-Administrative-detention-and-the-assault-on-civil-liberties-411823
Government offices: http://www.pmo.gov.il/English/IsraelGov/Pages/GovMinistries.aspx
Knesset Members: http://knesset.gov.il/mk/eng/mkindex_current_eng.asp?view=1
Shabbat shalom
Yehudit Katsover and Nadia Matar
[LOGO]
The Knesset
MK Bezalel Smotrich
27 Menahem Av 5775
12 August 2015
To
Justice Minister
MK Ayelet Shaked To
Defense Minister
MK Moshe Ya’alon To
Minister of Internal Security
MK Gilad Erdan To
Attorney General
Atty. Yehuda Weinstein
Distinguished Sirs and Madam,
Subject: The security services’ lack of restraint in the manner that they deal with crime in Judea and Samaria
Unfortunately it seems that in recent days the Israel Police and General Security Services have lost all restraint in an attempt, which is important of itself, to locate the perpetrators of the severe incident in Kfar Duma.
The public noise, not to say, call for attack, and the resounding professional failure of the enforcement authorities until now in the prevention of such crimes and the identification of those who have carried them out, has deteriorated into what seems like actual hysteria, to the extent of a loss of control and the crossing of red lines that is difficult to accept in a democratic state of law.
Here are just a few examples of this hysterical and non-professional behavior:
1. In recent days the Israel Police has gone to many heads of security in communities of Benyamin and demanded, without a warrant, to take recordings from all of the security cameras in the communities. Thus, across the board, resulting in a great intrusion of privacy and lack of respect to the residents of the communities in general, whose every step in recent days, no matter how personal or intimate, is exposed. It is inconceivable thus to harm the rights of so many people in so sweeping an action, in order to find a few perpetrators.
2. Sunday, before sunrise, the police force descended upon the homes of seven families in the community of Adei Ad, awakened them and carried out a brutal search and ultimately, two people were arrested – one, a resident of Hevron who was required to attend an investigation and did not appear, and the other is a resident of the area and a member of the emergency unit of the community, and while a search was carried out in his house, an illegally owned bullet-proof vest was found… (the weapon that was found in his possession was legally owned). What is this if not hysteria?! What good does it do for the children of the seven families, after their traumatic meeting with the police, who will hate policemen for the rest of their lives?! What dangerous wanted criminals did they have to arrest there in such haste that justified waking up the children of a family before sunrise and causing them such a trauma as this search?!
3. The outrageous administrative detentions, lacking specific connection to the incident at Duma (for example – the family of Eviatar Slonim told me that he was actually staying with his family on vacation when the incident occurred). About such things it is said, “Since the destroyer has the authority to destroy, he does not distinguish between the righteous and the sinner”. Administrative detentions are a necessary evil to be used sparingly and when there is no other option. It is difficult to free ourselves of the feeling that the present wave of arrests is intended to compensate for past failures in investigating similar incidents and to appease impassioned public opinion. Have administrative detentions ever been used against organized crime in the State of Israel?! How is it that this tool is reserved only for the residents of Judea and Samaria?!
The three examples described above teach us about what seems like hysterical, unprofessional and unethical behavior, that serves no purpose other than to “check off” something on a list and to indulge the public and media hunger to see the system “do something”. This behavior does great harm to the residents’ rights and harms the public’s faith in the law enforcement agencies no less.
I wish to take this opportunity to entirely reject any possible comparison that anyone might try to make in recent days between the treatment of Arab terror and the tools at the security system’s disposal to deal with it and the treatment of very severe (!) actions that Jews have done against Arabs (assuming that it is Jews who did it).
The most common way to deal with crime and criminals in a democratic state is according to a criminal process and procedure, the balance between the need to defend society, to bring offenders to trial and to bring them to justice, and the need to maintain the rest of society’s values, which, in general, are the rights of suspects and the accused within the framework of the process.
In the reality of battling against an enemy there is sometimes the necessity to use tools that are not normally used, among them the death sentence, demolition of houses as a deterrent to such deeds in the future, administrative detentions and so forth. We do not allow ourselves, and rightly so, to do this when faced with other severe social and criminal phenomena in society, including organized crime, which exacts a high price in blood, quite literally, and still does not justify the use of extra-ordinary tools for ordinary crime.
We are not engaged in a war against Jews! Crime is crime and it is the duty of law enforcement agencies to eradicate it. However, crime is not terror and crime perpetrated by citizens of a state does not make them enemies and does not justify acting outside the norm, as we must do in a war against enemies.
The various belligerent calls of “Jewish terror” and the intentions to give law enforcement agencies the tools at their disposal in the war against terror as well as against perpetrators who are citizens of the state, are populist and superficial and reflect an inability to make even a minimal distinction between complex situations. Your role as those responsible for the law enforcement agencies is to be able to deal with this complexity and navigate carefully between the delicate boundaries and this should dictate your policy.
Law enforcement agencies must display more professionalism and apparently also work harder in order to cope successfully with those few residents of the communities of Judea and Samaria who are suspected of criminal activity, but they must not be allowed to excuse a lack of professionalism and a lack of success by applying drastic tools from another world, including a grave blow to human rights, often regarding all the residents of Judea and Samaria (for example, the severe demand to take the recorded video from all of the security cameras in the communities of Binyamin).
As someone who has trust in the law enforcement agencies, I call on you not to be drawn into cheap and inflammatory populism and urgently to impose the necessary restraints on the law enforcement agencies.
Former president of the Supreme Court, Prof. Aharon Barak, often says that democracy is required to fight with one hand tied behind its back. If these words are correct in the Arab enemy’s murderous war against terror, they are ten times as correct in dealing with brothers.
It is important to note, not incidentally, that regarding the incident in Duma, nothing has yet been proven to indicate that Jews are behind it. To the best of my knowledge, internal-Arab lines of inquiry, touching on internal conflicts between residents of the village, are also being investigated.
Sincerely
MK Bezalel Smotrich