In Israel, Itamar Ben Gvir made serious accusations on Monday. A figure of the extreme right, the Minister of National Security denounced a “coup d'état”, intended to harm him, the arrest of a senior official of the prison administration and two other police officers.
“It’s a coup d’état […] a political decision,” he lambasted in a televised statement, after the announcement by several Israeli media of the arrest of these three men, presented as close to the minister and suspected of corruption and breach of trust. The police have made no comment on this case.
Ben Gvir denounces “personal motives”
In the evening, several Israeli media reported that the head of the prison administration who had been interviewed by the police was in fact the head of this institution, Kobi Yaakobi. Itamar Ben Gvir, who appointed Kobi Yaakobi to the post in January, posted a photo on his Telegram channel showing the two of them with the comment “Kobi, we love you”.
These arrests are an “attempt to bring down me, the government and Prime Minister” Benjamin Netanyahu, the minister fumed. “The decision to investigate police officers and a senior prison service official who implement my policy clearly and fully […] is a political decision, with personal motives,” he added.
The previous week, the minister had given his “full” support to four people working in his office who, according to the Israeli press, were interviewed by the police as part of an investigation into weapons permits issued without respect for criteria imposed by law. In his diatribe, he directly attacked the state attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara, also the government's legal advisor. Appointed in 2022 to this position, she has repeatedly attracted the wrath of certain ministers in the current government.
Calls to order by the Attorney General
“In order for the right-wing government to function, without the legal advisor stopping it, we must stop this crazy campaign and its legal coup,” said Itamar Ben Gvir.
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In March 2023, the Attorney General called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to order, deeming “illegal” one of his public interventions on the project to reform the judicial system which was then dividing the country, given his ongoing trials for corruption. This year, she also called the government to order on the politically ultra-sensitive issue of the conscription of ultra-Orthodox Jews studying in yechivot (Talmudic schools), forcing the executive to issue call-ups for several thousand of them. them in the absence of valid law allowing the extension of the exemption they benefit from.
