In Israel’s democracy battle, an added front: Politicized police
| TEL AVIV, Israel
Blocking Arab citizens’ antiwar protests. Promoting an officer who ordered aggressive tactics against demonstrators to lead Israel’s police. Another officer’s refusal to arrest violent Jewish settlers to curry favor with his boss. This is just a partial list of how the Israeli police force has been politicized under National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
The process has proceeded relentlessly since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave Mr. Ben-Gvir, an extremist settler provocateur with his own long rap sheet, the highest law enforcement job in the country.
Why We Wrote This
A story focused onHow central is an independent police force to democracy? In Israel, the politicization of the national police is seen as part of the hard-line government’s revived judicial overhaul program, which sparked a mass pro-democracy protest movement.
Analysts say it’s part of a broader assault on the legal status quo ante by the hard-right coalition, which is reviving its judicial overhaul efforts targeting the Supreme Court and the independent attorney general.
“If you are politicizing or privatizing the police it means you are not a democracy,” says political science professor Gayil Talshir.
In November, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara wrote Mr. Netanyahu asking that he consider firing Mr. Ben-Gvir.
“The police are supposed to be a central gatekeeper in a democracy,” says law professor Yaniv Roznai. “Imagine that tomorrow the court gives some kind of order, and the government does not want to comply with it. ... I am not sure with whom the police will comply.”
Blocking Arab citizens’ protests against the war in Gaza. Making a mid-level officer who ordered aggressive tactics against anti-government demonstrators the head of Israel’s national police force. Another officer’s refusal to arrest violent Jewish settlers in the hopes of currying favor with his boss.
This is just a partial list of how the Israeli police force has been politicized under National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
The process has proceeded relentlessly since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power two years ago and gave Mr. Ben-Gvir, an extremist settler provocateur with his own long rap sheet, the highest law enforcement job in the country.
Why We Wrote This
A story focused onHow central is an independent police force to democracy? In Israel, the politicization of the national police is seen as part of the hard-line government’s revived judicial overhaul program, which sparked a mass pro-democracy protest movement.
Analysts say the politicization of the police is part of a broader assault on the legal status quo ante by the hard-right coalition, which is reviving its judicial overhaul efforts targeting the Supreme Court and the independent attorney general – key checks on political power in Israel.
“If you are politicizing or privatizing the police, it means you are not a democracy,” says Gayil Talshir, a senior lecturer in political science at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. What’s happening within Israel’s police, she argues, is a “grand plan to change Israel from a liberal democracy to an autocracy.”
“Politicization means ending the notion of expertise – one cannot be a professional judge, journalist, police officer, or academic,” she says. “You are always being asked, ‘Which side are you on?’ And if you are deemed to be on the left, you are considered intent on tearing the government down, and if you are on the right, you are seen as supporting it.”
The Netanyahu-led government of nationalist, ultranationalist, and religious parties launched its controversial overhaul two years ago to limit judicial review of legislation and executive decision-making. It said it was seeking to constrain what it considered an overly activist, liberal-minded Supreme Court.
At the time, a mass protest movement – unprecedented in size and duration in Israel’s history – was mobilized to counter what democracy activists portrayed as a naked power grab. Demonstrations packed streets around the country for about 40 weeks straight, until the devastating Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas assault thrust the country into war and brought the overhaul efforts to a halt.
Fifteen months into a multi-front conflict that is being felt less acutely now in Israel, the anti-government protests have shrunk, and morphed into demands for a ceasefire deal to return the remaining Oct. 7 hostages.
But for its part, the government is ramping up its judicial overhaul, albeit in altered form. The revised agenda has something for most everyone in the coalition: Mr. Netanyahu, facing an ongoing corruption trial, is still seeking his political survival; settlers still see the overhaul as a path to imposing sovereignty over the West Bank; and the ultra-Orthodox parties are now counting on it to thwart new efforts to induct their conscription-age youths into the army.
Ministers target attorney general
Considered an obstacle to government plans, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara lately has been the subject of increasingly fierce attacks bordering on incitement by ministers who have noisily called for her firing. She has held firm to her role providing legal oversight of the government while leading prosecutions on behalf of the state.
“This is why she is a target. … They [government ministers] want a ‘yes man’ so they can rule without boundaries,” says Yaniv Roznai, a law professor at the Rubinstein Center for Constitutional Challenges at Reichman University.
In November Ms. Baharav-Miara wrote Mr. Netanyahu asking that he consider firing Mr. Ben-Gvir, citing his promotion of loyalists and mounting evidence that he interferes in police operations, including anti-government protests.
“The police are supposed to be a central gatekeeper in a democracy. Imagine that tomorrow the court gives some kind of order, and the government does not want to comply with it,” says Professor Roznai. “We are now in a situation that, frankly, if the court or attorney general say ‘A,’ and the minister of national security says ‘B,’ I am not sure with whom the police will comply, and this is highly problematic. It goes to the core of the rule of law.”
That scenario may already be happening. Last summer, when a right-wing mob that included lawmakers broke into a detention camp to protest the arrest of soldiers accused of raping a Palestinian prisoner from Gaza, then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Mr. Ben-Gvir may have stymied the police response.
Police duties
Last week, the Supreme Court struck down a section of a controversial new law that gave Mr. Ben-Gvir the power to take control over policies governing how police conduct investigations.
In issuing the ruling, Justice Isaac Amit warned that the police had become dangerously politicized under Mr. Ben-Gvir and, citing a jump in crime rates, noted it isn’t doing the job it is tasked to do. In particular, 2024 saw a dramatic increase in homicides among Israeli Arabs to more than twice the level before Mr. Ben-Gvir took office. There has also been a steep climb in the number of women killed nationwide.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel issued a statement recently claiming an “escalation in arrests and detentions of protesters, alongside the adoption of militant and harsh tactics to disperse them,” saying “police violence has become part of the mainstream.”
Moshe Peretz, a political activist, says even fellow veteran protesters are being deterred from showing up at demonstrations because police have been making more frequent arrests, charging into crowds on horses and removing protesters with what he terms brute force.
“I know well the experience of sitting on a cold bench while detained for hours,” he says.
According to political analyst Dahlia Scheindlin, “They are trying to create an ethos of raw power controlling society, sending a message: ‘If you are a loyal citizen to the government, you will be left alone, but raise your head and we will slap you down.’”
Mr. Ben-Gvir’s Ministry of National Security did not respond to a request for comment.
Palestinian citizens’ rights
For Palestinian citizens of Israel, the heavy-handed police stifling of dissent is nothing new. But the rise in systemic targeting of the community, especially when it comes to freedom of speech and the right to protest under Mr. Ben-Gvir and more so since the war began, has been marked.
Some 200 Palestinian citizens and East Jerusalem residents are facing charges for exercising their rights of freedom of expression, according to Adalah, a Palestinian-run legal center based in Haifa.
In one case, a teacher from Nazareth says she was arrested and held blindfolded in a police car overnight, her hands and feet cuffed, for posting a video of herself on TikTok dancing with a time stamp of Oct. 7. She denies the video was meant as a celebration of the Hamas attack, as Mr. Ben-Gvir reportedly suggested when he instructed police to investigate her.
Myssana Morany, an Adalah lawyer, is representing organizers of a planned march this Friday in the Arab town of Sakhnin calling for an end to the war in Gaza and a crackdown on crime in the Arab sector. The march has been blocked by police on the grounds it could weaken the army’s morale.
“The police,” she says, “are now not even trying to hide the sentiment that, ‘We don’t like your political position, so we are not allowing you to protest.’”
