Ben Gvir said seeking to name ally as police top lawyer; commissioner objects

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir is reportedly planning to install Eran Nahon, a prison service official who helped promote the minister’s harsh policies towards Palestinian inmates, as the police’s next chief legal adviser.

The spot will become empty on February 15, when current legal adviser Assistant Commissioner Elazar Kahana is expected to step down and retire from the force. Israel Police announced his departure in December.

According to a Haaretz report published Sunday, Ben Gvir has been pushing for Nahon’s appointment, flouting the wishes of Commissioner Danny Levy, who wanted the role to go to someone already serving in the force.

The report further claimed that the minister has been holding up Levy’s picks for regional commanders within the force over the dispute.

Unlike Kahana, who several times locked horns with Ben Gvir over the latter’s efforts to shape law enforcement, Nahon has a track record of promoting the far-right minister’s policies in prisons, including his strident defense of a menu for Palestinian security prisoners that significantly reduced their food intake.

Speaking at an Israel Bar Association conference in May 2024, Nahon defended Ben Gvir’s role in setting policy. “He is the national security minister and it is his role to set policy, so long as the policy measures up to the law’s conditions — and I don’t see an issue,” he said, according to the Walla news outlet.

He went on to defend the policy itself: “At the end of the day, it is to harshen the prison conditions until they receive the bare minimum that they are entitled to under the law. Why give them more?”

Nevertheless, a High Court ruling in September deemed the nutrition provided by the state to security inmates insufficient “to enable a basic existence.”

Nahon was promoted in November from the rank of assistant commissioner in the Israel Prison Service to commissioner (not the top rank in the service), in a ceremony attended by Ben Gvir and Israel Prison Service chief Kobi Yaakobi.

Kahana, who served as the police’s chief legal adviser for over four years before stepping down, faced pressure from Levy before his final departure from the force.

The top cop sought to dismiss Kahana as legal adviser and put him in charge of the police’s prosecution division, considered a less powerful role, but was stopped short after Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara wrote him a letter freezing the move, which she claimed was illegal.

Kahana in 2024 opposed Ben Gvir’s failed bid to promote Superintendent Meir Suissa and allow him to command his own police station — after he was indicted for throwing a stun grenade into a crowd of anti-government protesters.

More recently, this past summer, the outgoing legal counsel signed onto an affidavit submitted by the attorney general against Ben Gvir’s refusal to sign off on the promotion of Supt. Rinat Saban, a police detective who testified in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial.