Police Cleanup Still Leaves Plenty of Dirt
UPDATE: Video of Mickey Levy 's attack on Nadia Matar available here
Police chief Moshe Karadi who had defied the Knesset Commission investigating the Amona police riot is now finally being removed, not for the brutality his forces have engaged in against protesters opposed to the Kadima regime, but for corruption. Along with the resignation of Dan Halutz, this marks the removal of two of the top people responsible for the Pogrom at Amona.
They have not of course been removed for their actions at Amona, but because their general incompetence and corruption passed the point where it could be further tolerated.
The story however is far from over. Replacing outgoing Police Chief Moshe Karadi, will be the Chief Warden of Israel's prisons, Yaakov Ganot. Ganot had supervised the prisons during the Disengagement and prepared for the arrests of large numbers of civil disobedience protesters and maintained conditions in which prisoners have been deprived of civil rights and abused.
Worse yet, former Jerusalem police chief Mickey Levy will become the new Deputy Police Chief. Mickey Levy is infamous for supervising the beating of protesters all the way back to the Oslo days. Then there's the utterly shameful case in which Women in Green head Nadia Matar and Mickey Levy.
At a 1994 demonstration, Levy assaulted Nadia Matar and dragged her to a police van. She was then charged in court with assaulting Levy. It took a subpoena of a Channel 2 tape to demonstrate that Levy was lying. However Levy was never charged with assault or perjury, instead of all charges against him were dropped. Olmert helped put him on the fast track to promotion and it was open news that Olmert intended to push Levy up the ladder. Now Mickey Levy, despite or rather because of his long history of police brutality and violent assaults against Zionist protesters is a step away from being chief of police.
It will take much more than the current resignations to clean up the extraordinarily dirty police, a system that became a good deal dirtier under Sharon and Olmert.
MiShenichnas Adar Yetzei Karadi
In time for Parshas Misphatim, at least some justice was done here.