Lawyers Moshe Pulaski, Adi Kider and Ofir Steiner Mahonunu, who represent the IDF soldiers from the incident with the far left activists in Hebron, welcomed the decision of the commander of the Southern Command Colonel Eliezer Toledano – for softening the soldier’s sentence.
However, the lawyers say that it is too little and too late, and stand by their demand to open an investigation against the IDF spokesman and the command – and say that the investigation should be taken outside the IDF.
The lawyers: “We welcome the softening of the sentence, but it is too little and too late. The conduct of the IDF spokesperson in the incident and the senior command requires the opening of a criminal investigation and the removal of the investigation from the IDF, as we demanded from the Ptzer. It is not possible that the judgment of the soldiers was decided by the Chief of Staff, the IDF spokesman and senior officials in the IDF, before their position was heard with an open heart and an open mind.
“The soldiers protected all of us there, and faced a violent and violent group of anarchists, who published partial and biased materials from the event. The IDF and the police must act against the despicable phenomenon of harassment of IDF soldiers by the extreme left. It harms security, it harms the soldiers and it must stop. “Honno will give full support to our soldiers, we will not be silent until justice is served against the attackers of the soldiers and until the soldiers return back to their unit.”
Yesterday, the Givatay fighters contacted the PATR through their gifted lawyers with the demand to open a criminal investigation against the IDF spokesman, Brigadier General Ran Kochavi and the command officials – following the publication of the findings of the operational investigation, in violation of the law and orders.
In addition, they demanded to stop the investigation of the Ministry of Defense and to continue the investigation outside the military system.
Lawyers Adi Kider, Ofir Steiner and Moshe Polsky explained in their letter that according to the law, the orders and the ruling of the Supreme Court, the military investigation or prosecution elements are not allowed to be exposed to the operational investigation materials. This is because the operational investigation is used as a tool to draw operational lessons, and hence there is great value in encouraging the soldiers to speak freely within it, without this affecting criminal proceedings that may be opened against them in the future.
Where the separation is not maintained, there is a fear that the soldiers will stop cooperating with commanders’ investigations, and this will harm the operational capacity of the IDF.
Therefore, the attorney explained, according to the Military Jurisdiction Law, the findings of the IDF investigation are supposed to be confidential and kept under a shroud of secrecy, and not to be distributed in the media.
This is what they wrote regarding the publication of the announcement by the IDF spokesperson: “A review of the published announcement shows that the things published fall within the scope of ‘investigative material.’ After all, the title itself uses the language ‘the conclusions of the command investigation’, and accordingly the content directly touches on everything that the legislator mentioned – the summaries, the findings and the conclusions. Therefore, the things were prohibited in the publication – inside the IDF, certainly outside it in front of all the media,” argued the lawyers.
According to them, the publication of the findings of the investigation in such a public manner will almost certainly lead to the disclosure of the military investigation and prosecution elements: “The findings of the investigation concerning the ‘errors’ found in the conduct of the soldiers, when one of them is still under criminal investigation, were published and distributed publicly. They open news releases, radio shows and social media posts. They serve as a basis for public discussion and are repeatedly mentioned in the mouths of public figures. Everything was revealed to them. And is it really possible to believe that the investigating officers – including the commanders of the Israel Defense Forces, the investigators and the policemen – all went down into the bunker and covered their ears?!
“And that it can be considered that the prosecutors of the military attorney’s office all turned off their cell phones and locked themselves in their office? In such a situation, it is not possible to hold a criminal proceeding against the soldier in a way that would be free from the effects of publishing the investigation.”