Ben-Gvir police commissioner nominee slammed over aid truck security controversy

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir submitted his nomination for the next police commissioner, naming Avshalom Peled for the position, Israeli media reported on Thursday.

Meanwhile, current Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai informed Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara that Ben-Gvir instructed his deputy, Superintendent Avshalom Peled, who is supposed to replace him in the position, to refrain from providing security for the aid convoys to the Gaza Strip.

Shabtai wrote to the attorney-general that if he refused this instruction, Ben-Gvir would tell him that “there would be consequences.”

MK and Labor Party member Gilad Kariv called on the attorney-general to “get involved and demand that Ben-Gvir’s takeover of the police be stopped before the force becomes an altogether anti-democratic organization.”

“The commissioner’s letter reveals the criminal conduct of National Security Minister Ben-Gvir and the explicit actions on his part to disrupt the decisions of the cabinet and government. We call on the attorney-general to act by all means necessary to bring justice about,” Kariv stated.

Standing Together, a joint Jewish-Arab Israeli activist group that often heads efforts to secure aid convoys, announced, “The police commissioner proved tonight what he has been claiming for months – that the abandonment of aid trucks to lawbreakers from the settlements was a deliberate [Ben-Gvir] policy. A government that, on the one hand, approves the passage of aid and, on the other, allows attacks and burns things to the ground – is a dangerous one.”

Ben-Gvir responds to criticisms 

In response to political and public criticism, Ben-Gvir said, “Today, more than ever, it is important to root out the culture of lying found in the police.”

“When the commissioner wrote that I had a conversation with the deputy commissioner, he was hiding that the conversation took place while he was in surgery and the deputy commissioner was filling in for him... The other quotes and events are also falsified and include half-truths. It is only surprising that Kobi Shabtai (whom a court claimed his memory was defective) remembered to 'report’ the events so long after he claimed that they happened, and a month before he is to go home.”

“I will respond to the High Court of Justice about the letter and the attorney-general’s methods... She leaks, briefs, and tries to influence High Court judges.”