Tel-Chai Nation

Now that the investigation against Netanayhu is coming apart, Israeli police are continuing their witch hunt for the sake of it:

Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit on Monday asked police to address claims that investigators had overstepped their authority in searching the phones of aides to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

On Sunday, police confirmed they had opened an investigation into senior Netanyahu campaign figures alleged to have harassed Shlomo (Momo) Filber, a former confidant of Netanyahu who led the ruling Likud party’s campaign in the 2015 elections before testifying against the premier in an alleged bribery case.

Police searched the phones of Likud spokesman Jonatan Urich and the party’s campaign manager, Ofer Golan, in a move that riled right-wing activists and politicians. [...]

Mandelblit asked for the police’s response on Monday after he received a letter from a lawyer representing Urich, which was leaked to the press. The letter claimed that police investigators had looked at messages on his phone that were unrelated to the investigation of the harassment of Filber, Channel 12 news reported Monday evening.

Noa Milstein, Urich’s lawyer, sent the letter, titled “Illegal infiltration of the cell phone of Yonatan Urich,” to Mandelblit earlier Monday. It claims that police asked Urich to unlock his phone to read his messages to Golan without informing Urich of his right to refuse the request.

Urich unlocked the phone and allowed the investigator to take it out of the room. When she returned, he noticed that she had looked at messages unrelated to the case, the letter claims.

The letter then states that Urich saw the investigator send information from the messages to a Telegram group dedicated to Case 4000. If true, it would mean that the messages had been used in the investigation of another case. [...]

In a tweet, the prime minister called the search of his aides’ phones “a terror attack against Israeli democracy and every citizen’s right to privacy.”

“We don’t live under a totalitarian regime and this is unacceptable,” he said. “The goal is to terrorize my immediate circle and thus deny me the ability to respond to the criminal flood of leaks that is targeting me nonstop.”

I'd say the police have indeed overstepped their boundaries, and making it clearer than ever that they're just in this for the goal of getting rid of Netanyahu from the political scene. And that's exactly why they should stop already. It's become truly obvious by now what they're up do, one more reason why they have to cut out this harmful behavior.

Labels: Israel, Knesset, Moonbattery