OccupyTLV: Tel Aviv Police Commander suspects criminality by police in the camp

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The OccupyTLV camp is the only camp remaining in Israel following the mass Social Protest movement that started in 2011.

The recent case from the OccupyTLV camp follows a series of other cases, which raise concern regarding conduct of the Tel Aviv Police, relative to Social Protest and Civil Society activists.

Earlier this year, attempt was made by the Israel police to prosecute Daphni Leef and other Social Protest leaders, on bogus charges of violence against police. The prosecution was supported by false testimonies by policemen on the stand in the Tel Aviv court. However, that effort failed, when it became evident that police was lying, and videos showed police violence against Leef. On April 1, 2014, Attorney General Weinstein announced the dropping of the prosecutions against Leef and other Social Protest activists. [6]

The Tel Aviv police are also prosecuting Tax Authority whistleblower Rafi Rotem on charges of insulting and harassing policemen on duty. The case of whistleblower Rafi Rotem has been going on for some 12 years now. Around 2002, then highly commended, senor Tax Authority intelligence officer Rotem complained of corruption of higher officers of the Tax Authority, involving undermining the investigations of NIS tens and hundreds of millions of tax liabilities by businesses related to organized crime, tycoons, and persons close to the authorities. [7] Since his whistle-blowing, Rotem was subjected to harassment, intimidation, and retaliation by the Tel Aviv police, while the justice authorities have refused to fully investigate his allegations, and also refused to accord him protection, due to whistleblowers under Israeli law. As part of retaliatory measures, Rotem, who had won a number of commendations by the Israel police previous to his whistleblowing, has been subjected to false arrests, humiliation, and beating by police. No policeman has been disciplined for such conduct against Rotem, but now the Israel police are prosecuting Rotem for his words to such policemen during the incidents of his abuse. The case of Rafi Rotem has become a major cause of the Israeli Social Protest movement in recent months.

Overall, concern is that the Tel Aviv police are resorting to methods employed by repressive regimes against legitimate Social Protest and Civil Society activists. That, on the background of the glaring failure of the Tel Aviv police in investigations of organized crime, including assassinations in broad daylight in Tel Aviv center. [8]

The conduct of the Tel Aviv police should be viewed on the background of profound transformations in Israeli society and governance in the State of Israel since the assassination of Prime Minister Yizhak Rabin in 1995. Although the assassination is often attributed to opposition by extreme right elements to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the evidence shows that it also led to the establishment of an American-style neoconservative regime with matching consequences. [9]

During most of the period since the Rabin assassination, the Israeli economy has continued its healthy growth. Regardless, during the same period poverty and homelessness levels in Israel have soared, and housing has become unaffordable for working people. A huge gap has emerged in income and asset distribution, and the economy has become dominated by a handful of tycoons with close ties to government. A medieval-style debtors' court system has been established in the Israel, where fraud is rampant, exorbitant interest rate and attorneys fees are applied to the debtors, as well as unusual penalties, including, but not limited to, imprisonment, denial of the right to travel out of state, and until recently - revocation of driving licenses. [10-11]

Public trust in the political system in general, and in the justice system in particular, has plummeted. A recent European survey found that only 22% of Israelis believe that judges in Israel do not take bribes... [12] Recent OECD reports show that Israel is the nation with highest poverty level among developed nations and 5th- largest income gap. [13]

Such transformation is astounding in a nation that was for most of its history a welfare state, which successfully absorbed in its early years about a million refugees from post WWII Europe and from Arab nations, and which in the early 1990s successfully absorbed another 400,000 immigrants from the former Soviet Union.