From the Liveblog of
Sunday, September 8, 2024
Report: Ben Gvir’s security secretary told police not to use force against far-right rioters at IDF base in July
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s security secretary reportedly instructed police to refrain from using force against far-right rioters after they broke into the IDF’s Beit Lid base in late July, telling senior officers to “be sensitive.”
“You can’t say he gave an order not to arrest anyone, but that was the spirit of things,” the Haaretz daily quotes security officials as saying regarding Brig. Gen. Moshe Pinchi.
According to the report, the army was forced to divert hundreds of troops to protect the Sde Teiman and Beit Lid bases after they were stormed by demonstrators — including Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu and MKs Yitzhak Kroizer and Limor Son Har-Melech from Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party — to protest the arrest of servicemen accused of sodomizing a Palestinian security prisoner.
“This didn’t affect core missions, but it does affect the overall system of securing the area when you remove these forces from the West Bank,” a security source tells Haaretz.
No arrests have been made yet and no suspects have been summoned for questioning in connection with the overrunning of the bases.
