Courtesy of JNS. Photo credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90
Likud Party MK Amit Halevi leads a committee meeting at the Knesset in Jerusalem, March 19, 2023
(JNS) — Lawmakers for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party are preparing to push for the release of Israeli Jews held without charges in administrative detention in the wake of Yoav Gallant’s removal as defense minister, Srugim reported on Wednesday.
Likud parliamentarian Amit Halevi, a member of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, earlier this week visited filmmaker Avraham Shapira, who was arrested at Gallant’s orders and has been detained at Rimonim Prison without charges for some three months.
At the time of his arrest, Shapira was working on an investigative film about the activities of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) in the 1990s, “including embarrassing affairs for the ISA such as the use of instigator agents, the use of [undercover agent] Avishai Raviv among the settlers and other stories that will shake the country,” according to his lawyer.
Halevi told Shapira that a group of Knesset members had tried to get Gallant to cancel the detention orders against him and other Israelis held without charges. Following Gallant’s departure, they intend to increase the pressure on Defense Minister Israel Katz.
Last week, Religious Zionism Party lawmaker Simcha Rothman, who heads the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, slammed Shapira’s incarceration following a visit to the detained man, stressing that, with regard to Israeli citizens, administrative arrests must be used “in the most limited way.
“Surely and especially when it concerns the administrative arrest of a journalist who is working on a documentary about the Shin Bet, this cannot be done lightly, as was apparently done in this case,” Rothman said.
