AG warns government against attempts to influence policing of protests

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara sends a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in which she warns against any government intention to interfere in the police response to widespread ongoing protests.

“Precisely during a protest against the government’s policy and its ministers, the government must be extremely careful to avoid actions that could be interpreted as an attempt to illegitimately influence the professional judgment of law enforcement officials,” Baharav-Miara writes in the letter, in response to a request for information by the cabinet secretary on the issue.

The letter comes a day after Tel Aviv police chief Ami Eshed — who had repeatedly clashed with National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir — resigned his position, saying he was forced out for political reasons and for his refusal to violently crack down on protesters.

“I could have easily used disproportionate force and filled the Ichilov [Medical Center] emergency room at the end of every demonstration in Tel Aviv,” Eshed said last night. “We could have cleared Ayalon [Highway] within minutes at the terrible cost of cracking heads and breaking bones and at the cost of breaking the pact between police and the citizenry… Unfortunately, for the first time in my three decades of service, I was met with the bizarre reality in which calm and order were not the desired goal, but rather the contrary was the case.”