Israel Police Ch.-Supt. Amit Pollak was indicted on Sunday for attacking a protester and obstructing justice, in the second such indictment in a week.
On April 13, 2024, a little over a year ago, an anti-government protest was planned to take place in Caesarea, near the home of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Pollak was the head of the Hadera police station at the time.
Several IDF veterans who fought in the Yom Kippur War, all mostly over the age of 70, planned to arrive at the protest with an installation resembling a tank, as they all served in the Armored Corps.
The fixture was made of carton and Styrofoam, with speakers connected to it, and had been brought to previous protests. Prior to the protest, the installation was parked by Shimi Atar’s home – one of the protesters. Because of its size, it jutted out into the sidewalk, blocking it.
At around 6 p.m., 20 police officers or so arrived at the house, led by Pollak, to instruct that the fixture be moved out of Caesarea.
Even though it was parked outside a private home, Pollak said it had to be moved “because we are in the middle of the war” and because the artwork on the installation could lead to “public alarm.”
How did Atar assault the protester?
Atar and other protesters questioned this order, and the driver of the truck said he did not have the keys to move the installation. Pollak said that he would arrest him “within two minutes” if the installation wasn’t moved.
Atar then told the driver to get inside the house, after which Pollak proceeded to push Atar with his hand, hard. Atar yelled at him, and Pollak choked him and then immediately instructed the police officers with him to arrest Atar, even though Atar hadn’t said anything to warrant the arrest.
Atar was apprehended and led to the nearby cop car. As they walked, Atar fell to the ground and was lifted by the officers and taken to the vehicle.
While he was taken away, some of the officers near the house pushed some of the other protesters standing there. One of them was Yaakov Sivan, who, like some of the others, filmed the whole incident with Atar on his cell phone.
Pollak approached Sivan and pushed him hard as well. Sivan stumbled, lost his balance, and fell to the ground.
Pollak claimed that Sivan was obstructing his ability to do his job by filming the incident. It is not illegal to film in a public space.
ONE OTHER man was arrested along with Atar and Yaakov at around 6:15 p.m. They were all held at the station until 1 a.m. Wednesday morning.
An investigation was soon opened by the Justice Ministry’s Police Investigation Department (PID). Pollak was summoned for testimony on August 5.
Before he arrived at the offices though, he abandoned his personal cell phone and came instead with his daughter’s to avoid it being used against him and, in doing so, obstructed the investigation.
Asked to hand it over as the investigation progressed, he refused to give his cell phone to the investigators. He said that it had broken and wasn’t of use anymore, yet it was registered as active just one day after the PID questioning.
Two days after the PID interrogation, on August 7, the home of Pollak and his wife, Shlomit Liron Buskila, in Kiryat Ata was searched to locate the missing cell phone. The officers found it, but it was locked.
Pollak refused to reveal the password, and the police’s technological teams couldn’t crack it either, but transferred it into the police’s custody.
On February 19, the Haifa Magistrate’s Court ordered that police try to open the phone again, and that if they couldn’t, the phone was to be returned to Pollak.
Police appealed the order, but the court overruled it – the phone was to be returned to Pollak.
That day, at the Buskila office in Jerusalem, the phone was transferred in an envelope to a courier. Later that evening, Pollak received the envelope. Together, the couple decided that they had to make the phone disappear.
At around 9:20 p.m., Buskila left the house with the envelope, which included both the phone and a document the courier signed, noting its status. About an hour later, the High Court of Justice ruled that the phone must be returned to the authorities.
Pollak’s wife didn’t return until the next day. At some point during that time frame, she went to the beach, somewhere between Nahariya and Shavei Zion, and threw the phone into the ocean.
Separately, on Thursday, mounted police officer Shai Peretz was indicted for using disproportionate force against protester Yael Reuveni.
In the Thursday indictment, Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court Judge Eitan Kornhauser took stock of the nuanced and complicated work police do.
He wrote that their work was “probably aggravated by physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion from the nonstop work.”
“There is no doubt that the police’s job is difficult and challenging,” Kornhauser wrote.
However, he added, “This does not excuse blurring the boundaries of use of force. This blurring, this entry into a grey area between what is and is not allowed, crossing from something that serves as a warning and an act that is criminal, could severely damage the police’s functionality and the public’s trust in it.”
According to the judge, “Acting within the bounds of the law while protecting civil rights is critical to our national security. Without protecting these rights, the social contract between civilians and the state” is broken.