Lawmakers who broke into Sde Teiman base blame ‘Deep State’ for police investigation, say they won’t answer summons for questioning

Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu and Likud MK Nissim Vaturi say that they will refuse to answer a police summons after it was reported that they will be investigated for their role in a break-in at the IDF’s Sde Teiman base in southern Israel last July.

Along with former MK Zvi Sukkot, the two lawmakers were among dozens of far-right activists who rioted outside the base on July 29, 2024, after nine IDF soldiers were detained by Military Police investigators amid allegations of severe abuse against a Palestinian terror detainee.

In a post on X, Eliyahu says that he will “not submit to a political investigation.”

“In a state government by the rule of law, a Knesset member has a duty to act where crime is suspected,” he says, asserting that his actions at the IDF detention facility were justified under the scope of his job and thus protected under the parliamentary immunity law.

“This is the purpose of the immunity law: Not to protect members of the Knesset, but to protect public representatives and the public itself from the abuse of governmental power,” he argues.

Addressing Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, who, along with State Prosecutor Amit Aisman, reportedly approved the police investigation, Eliyahu warns that “the era in which you used the authority granted to you to trample on the law is over.”

Meanwhile, Vaturi declares that if the police want to investigate him, they’ll have to “drag me from the Knesset building in handcuffs.”

“You won’t silence me!” writes the backbench Likud lawmaker, implying that the investigation has been orchestrated by the government’s critics. “I won’t submit to a political investigation from the school of the Deep State prosecutor and the attorney general of the Kaplan cult.”

Former MK Zvi Sukkot echoes the same conspiracies in a post on X, declaring that “the Deep State wants us in prison.”