Rightwing attorney Itamar Ben-Gvir on Monday sent the Attorney General a request to recommend that the government cancel the designation of the Kach movement as a terrorist organization, Hakol Hayehudi reported. A copy of the request was sent to Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked (Habayit Hayehudi).
Among other things, the petition states that “it is clear to all to any knowledgeable person that the government’s decision was a political ploy” and was made for extraneous considerations – to silence people, and not on professional grounds.
In 1994, after Dr. Baruch Goldstein’s attack on Muslims at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, the Israeli government decided to declare the Kach and the Kahane Chai movements as terrorist organizations, despite the fact that an independent commission of inquiry headed by Justice Meir Shamgar concluded explicitly that Dr. Goldstein acted alone.
Ben-Gvir suggested that today there is no longer any doubt that the terrorist designation was made against a group of people whose love for Israel has flourished, and most of them never acted violently, and whose views (the need to expel the enemies, the struggle for a Jewish state, and the love for Israel) are shared by the state’s defense minister, and have inspired enacting the Nationality Law recently.
Attorney Ben-Gvir added that “today, in retrospect, it turns out that most of the secret materials furnished in support making the movements illegal came from Shin Bet agents such as Avishai Raviv, who libeled and falsified information, and whose credibility is worthless.
“In addition, the Knesset permits the activity of the Joint Arab List, whose members are inciting against Israel, seeking to harm the Jewish democratic state, while you (the AG) are showing appalling helplessness in dealing with that party and its members.
“If these terrorists deserve to serve in the Knesset and you have no intention to either ask for their disqualification, or, certainly, declare them a terrorist organization, then an absurd situation has been created, in which Israeli patriots are declared terrorists and the real terrorists are sitting in the Knesset…”
At the conclusion of his letter, attorney Ben-Gvir asked for the AG’s response, so that, should the response be negative, Ben-Gvir would have the opportunity to petition the Supreme Court.