Settle this.
A few blog posts ago a brief discussion of the rather infamous conduct of (some) Israel police officers came up in the comments. I saw this report at Arutz Sheva this morning and thought – good. Its long past time for citizens to start fighting back against this kind of nefarious conduct by Israeli police.
Judge Irit Cohen ruled that Shomron Police District Intelligence Chief Yaakov Golan wrote three false reports against Yitzhar residents, that Detective Officer Gil Desheh submitted similarly deceptive information to courts on several occasions, and that Police Officer Eliezer Alharar, who served then as Commander of the Serious Crime Unit in the Samaria/Judea Police District, slandered the same residents on the radio and elsewhere.
Yitzhar spokesman Avraham Binyamin said, “It has once again been proven that police reports in the media about Yitzchar are slanders and libels sewn up very coarsely. The lies disseminated by the police against the residents come to cover up their ineptitude, lack of professionalism and chronic negligence in the fight against Arab crime.”The story at hand began in the summer of 2004 when an Arab shepherd claimed that his flock of sheep had been stolen and was being held in the Shomron town of Yitzar, between Kedumim and Itamar, south of Shechem (Nablus). The police allowed the shepherd to enter Yitzhar, “identify” his flock, and take it back without further ado – over the residents’ protests that the sheep had not been stolen and in fact belonged to them.
Anticipating the residents not to take it lying down, the police waited in ambush – and when some of the former chased after the Arab and their sheep and restored the flock to its Jewish owners, the police promptly arrested the Jews. However, they did not arrest those who retrieved the sheep, but rather the members of the emergency alert team of Yitzhar, who had arrived on the scene not because of the flock, but because of reports that an Arab had infiltrated the town.Over the next ten days, the four arrested men were held in jail, and their case was brought before three different courts. The evidence against them consisted of reports by policeman Yaakov Golan and appearances by officer Gil Desheh accusing them of “armed robbery.” Three lawyers of the Honenu Civil Rights Organization worked hard to prove that the charges were false, the four were finally freed, and the case against them was ultimately closed. However, the four emergency crew members refused to let the matter end there. With the help of Honenu and Attorney Elad Rosenblatt, they sued the police for damages. Judge Irit Cohen found for the plaintiffs, ruling that “in their enthusiasm to teach the Yitzhar residents a lesson, the police lied both in the courts and to the media.”
But it really doesn’t end there.
