Police, IDF absent from Knesset hearing on far-right attacks on detention facilities

Israel Police reportedly declines to show, IDF skips session due to miscommunication; meeting addresses riots at army bases after arrest of soldiers suspected of abusing detainee

Israeli soldiers and police clash with far-right protesters, after they broke into the Beit Lid army base over the detention for questioning of military reservists who are suspected of abuse of a Palestinian terror suspect detained there, on July 29, 2024. (Oren Ziv / AFP)
Israeli soldiers and police clash with far-right protesters, after they broke into the Beit Lid army base over the detention for questioning of military reservists who are suspected of abuse of a Palestinian terror suspect detained there, on July 29, 2024. (Oren Ziv / AFP)

Representatives of the Israel Police and Israel Defense Forces failed to show up at a hearing on Tuesday at the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee about the far-right mob attacks on the Sde Teiman and Beit Lid military bases, which took place over the summer.

The hearing was held two days after the Haaretz daily reported that around 20 people who participated in the incidents have been identified by police but have not yet been questioned due to senior police officers’ opposition to the investigation.

According to Haaretz, representatives of the police and National Security Ministry only informed the committee late on Sunday evening that they would not be attending, while the IDF’s failure to show up stemmed from miscommunication.

“There is a close connection between the Israel Police’s failure to appear for this hearing and the subject of the hearing — the Israel Police’s disregard for the highly serious events that occurred at Sde Teiman and Beit Lid,” Labor MK Gilad Kariv declared.

“The Israel Police chose, apparently on the instructions of [National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s] office, not to attend this parliamentary oversight hearing,” Kariv added.

Committee chairman Simcha Rothman (Religious Zionism) said that the mob attack on the bases was “the most marginal event of all the dangers and threats,” adding, “I think the leak of the video, we should all agree, caused much, much greater damage to the State of Israel and it is not being investigated.”

A heated argument erupts between soldiers at the Sde Teiman detention facility in southern Israel after Military Police investigators arrived to detain suspects for questioning, July 29, 2024. (Screenshot: X, used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)

Coalition lawmakers have condemned the leak of footage broadcast by Channel 12 in August, which purported to show IDF servicemen sexually abusing a Palestinian security prisoner at the Sde Teiman detention facility.

The footage showed soldiers at Sde Teiman taking aside one of detainees, who had been lying face down on the floor, then surrounding him with riot shields while allegedly committing the abuse.

On July 29, an ultranationalist mob broke into the two military bases to interrupt legal proceedings against the reservist soldiers suspected of the abuse.

MK Zvi Sukkot (Religious Zionism) pictured after breaking into the IDF’s Sde Teiman detention center, July 29, 2024. (X screenshot, used in accordance with clause 27a of the copyright law)

According to the IDF, the soldiers were suspected of aggravated sodomy (a charge equivalent to rape), causing bodily harm under aggravated circumstances, abuse under aggravated circumstances, and conduct unbecoming of a soldier.

The investigation into the soldiers was launched after the detained terror suspect was brought from the base to a hospital with signs of serious abuse, including to his anus.

In all, 10 soldiers at the facility were detained for the suspected sexual abuse of a Hamas police officer who had been arrested in the Gaza Strip several weeks prior.

After the reservists were arrested by masked Military Police detectives at the Sde Teiman base, a mob of far-right activists and lawmakers broke into the base and rioted, until soldiers were able to get them to leave the premises.

Israeli soldiers and police clash with far-right protesters who broke into the Beit Lid army base over the detention for questioning of military reservists suspected of abusing Palestinian terrorist detainees, in Kfar Yona, July 29, 2024. (Oren Ziv/AFP)

A short while later, after reports began circulating that the 10 reservist soldiers had been brought for a remand hearing at a military court at the Beit Lid base near Netanya, around 1,200 protesters arrived at that base and began trying to break in. The rioters were filmed brawling with soldiers who were guarding the base, trying to force their way into the facility.

Among those who entered the Sde Teiman base without authorization were MK Nissim Vaturi of the ruling Likud party, MK Zvi Sukkot of the Religious Zionism party, and National Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu of Otzma Yehudit.

The three have also yet to be questioned, Haaretz reported, even though police have been granted permission to do so. The IDF, meanwhile, is dissatisfied with the police’s management of the investigation, and has privately criticized it, the report said.

IDF reserve soldiers suspected of sexually abusing a Palestinian detainee at the Sde Teiman detention facility attend a hearing at the Beit Lid military court, August 6, 2024. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, IDF chief Herzi Halevi, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and President Isaac Herzog all harshly criticized the rioting, but many right-wing lawmakers spoke out in favor of the rioters and condemned the army for the arrest of the soldiers.

“The spectacle of military police officers coming to arrest our best heroes at Sde Teiman is nothing less than shameful,” said Ben Gvir, the far-right National Security Minster, whose ministry controls the police and Israel Prison Service.

Throughout the Israel-Hamas war, Sde Teiman has been used to hold more than 1,000 detainees from Gaza who were suspected of terrorist activity. The vast majority were suspected of taking part in Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, in which terrorists killed some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages.

This undated photo taken in winter 2023 and provided by Breaking the Silence, a whistleblower group of former Israeli soldiers, shows blindfolded Palestinians captured in the Gaza Strip in a detention facility on the Sde Teiman military base in southern Israel. (Breaking The Silence via AP)

Terror operatives and other suspects are generally initially held in detention facilities at the Sde Teiman, Anatot and Ofer IDF bases, before being handed over to the Israel Prison Service. The detainees can legally be held for 45 days before they must be either released or moved into the care of the IPS.

The IDF announced in May that it was investigating suspicions of abuse and torture of detainees in Sde Teiman following reports that the prisoners were being severely mistreated.

The reports alleged widespread abuse of prisoners, including extreme use of physical restraints, beatings, neglect of medical problems, arbitrary punishments, and more.

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