Four of the six prisoners who escaped from Gilboa Prison were apprehended/Israel Police
Two weeks ago, I laid out here a long list of Supreme Court rulings that showed how when talking about the need to change perceptions as a result of the events of October 7, our legal system must be an important part of this cognitive upheaval. Here's one more example. This is a ruling signed in 2010 by Justices Ayala Procacia, Yitzhak Amit and Salim Gibran, in a petition filed by "children of prisoners and security detainees," as they are called in this legal proceeding.
Until the second intifada, the Israel Prison Service allowed physical contact between terrorists imprisoned by it and their children under the age of 10 during the last fifteen minutes of their visit. This was done by moving the children to the other side of the partition separating the detainees from the visitors. In the early 2000s, after the waves of terrorist attacks, and when the prisons were filled with terrorists, the IPS repeatedly thwarted attempts to smuggle weapons, rockets and cell phones into them. Once, materials for making improvised explosives were seized on the bodies of the minors. At other times, smuggling of items hidden in diapers was thwarted. In one case, Ashgar was caught trying to smuggle a security prisoner out, through his critics, with instructions to carry out a terrorist attack for bargaining purposes. Against the background of all this, the IPS decided to change its approach. No more physical contact between terrorists and their visitors, even if they are children.
"There is so much equipment in the cell that you can't see the prisoner." Cell at Ramon Prison, in the security prisoners' compound / Reuven Castro
Shortly after the change in the rules, as stated, a petition was filed demanding that the children – or at least those among them up to the age of 10 – be allowed to remain physically close to their terrorist father again. The IPS's decision, he said, violates the prisoner's right to realize the prisoner's family ties with his family. The court could have thrown this petition down all the stairs. Explain that the enemy's war against us is no longer a criminal event. The next time a Palestinian tries to blow up Jews, he should know that in the coming years he will not be able to pet his children. That prison is not a "family connection" program, but a place where anyone who wishes to murder Jews because of their Jewishness should be severely punished.
You know what? Forget all these arguments. The judges' examples cited by the Israel Prison Service were enough to reject the petition and clarify that a physical encounter between the terrorist and his children has already proven to be potentially life-threatening smuggling, and as such, we have no interest in forcing the IPS to uphold it. None of this happened. Instead, the court held a series of hearings and forced the IPS to change its policy. In the first stage, the Israel Prison Service agreed to allow, under certain conditions, physical contact between the prisoner and his children under the age of six.
When the court demanded to bend down further, the IPS fought to stop here. "Raising the age of children with more 'open visits' will increase the circle of security risk, both in terms of the number of children, and in terms of the potential ability to exploit them to promote unacceptable goals in the hands of security prisoners," the IPS clarified.The High Court continued to discuss the issue and made it clear to the IPS that it expected more.
At one point he made his own proposal. Let's come to an agreed settlement. Do the petitioners want visits by children up to the age of ten, and the IPS is ready until the age of six? Let's go for the middle. The new arrangement will allow physical contact between terrorists and their children up to the age of eight, "and the frequency of 'open visits' will not decrease from once every two months."
"We found in this arrangement an appropriate balance to the conflicting considerations operating on this issue: the need to allow 'open visits' between security prisoners and their minor children, as part of realizing the natural need for direct and unmediated contact between parents and their children," Justice Procaccia reasoned, "versus the security risk inherent in holding visits without a quarantine partition, which may be exploited by various parties." The Prison Service was forced to accept the "compromise" offer.
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Where is the penalty here? The prisoners have a few hours a day of sports, with ping-pong and weights/Reuven Castro
Quality members' club
This week, following the reading of this ruling, I called retired Gondar Haim Glick, who served as deputy commissioner of the Israel Prison Service, while the IPS was trying to toughen the visitation policy. "The IPS surrendered then because it understood that it had no choice," he recalled, "but where are the judges who will set the norm? There is a security question here, but there is also a question of values. Why should these terrorists get a hug from their child? What happened in the wake of this High Court of Justice is that time and time again we seized various means that were smuggled to terrorists using their children. Once in pants, once in underwear, once in diapers."
Glick is a senior manager, experienced and respected. In the past, he served as CEO of Bar Ilan University, CEO of the Rishon LeZion Municipality, and CEO of Mabat Negev, which was responsible for the establishment of the Bahad City. In recent years he has been managing NTA (Urban Transportation Routes), the company engaged in the construction of the light rail and metro in central Israel. Two years ago, as a result of his many years of acquaintance with the Israel Prison Service, which continues closely to this day, he sent the members of the commission of inquiry into the escape of terrorists from Gilboa Prison a document with a series of insights and comments, among other things, about the extraordinary conditions that terrorists enjoy in our prisons. "These conditions are unparalleled throughout the Western world," he wrote. "The conditions of security prisoners in Israel are significantly better than the conditions of terrorists in Western prison systems."
Glick referred to the various perks, from the quantities of fine food to the multichannel television broadcasts. "The resulting feeling is that of a quality members' club. In this club, let us remind ourselves of the obvious, members and followers of murderers whose deterrence and deterrence we want. This reality leads to moral and moral confusion, and to the blurring of the senses and natural instincts... With the amount of items inside the prisoners' cells – from personal equipment, to televisions and fans, canteen and food items, cleaning supplies and more – there is no way guards will be able to supervise the hiding of prohibited objects and excavation attempts."
Glick has been walking around for years with a full stomach and a fascinating analysis of the evolutionary processes that have brought us this far. Two hours of conversation with him make it clear more than anything else how fundamentally disrupted our entire worldview of terrorists and the war against terrorists is.
"What happened to us in Gaza a few weeks ago exactly matches what has been happening to us in the IPS for many years," he explains. "After all, what happened in Gaza? We knew they were getting stronger, we knew they had power, but we said, 'Let's buy quiet,' because if we do something unusual and try to change the situation, there will be a mess and they will say that we are to blame and that we set the area on fire. We were educated for years that there is a very strong correlation between the situation of security prisoners and the Palestinian street. These terrorists in our prisons represent the Palestinian Authority or the Palestinian street, and if, God forbid, you harm them, you have a problem with the street. And just as we were afraid to do what was necessary in Gaza, because we were afraid that if we did something, missiles would fly at us, on the exact same base, every time the Israel Prison Service wanted to change something, the Shin Bet came and warned, 'Don't set my area on fire.'
"I was there when it all started. When I entered the Israel Prison Service in the early 1980s, security prisoners at Nablus Prison slept on mattresses. The court came and said, 'What do you mean? You can't live on mattresses.' So we gave them beds. Then they gave them a TV, then they increased the number of channels, and then came the canteen with the food, and we got to the point where a terrorist in prison has better food in the canteen than the grocery store in your town. The formula is simple, and it is similar to what happened to us in Gaza. Those who don't want to deal with them today will have to deal with them tomorrow. I had endless conversations with them. They see us as a weak country. They know that every threat of a hunger strike scares us. That's exactly how we raised the monster."
"There is no way guards will be able to supervise the hiding of prohibited objects and excavation attempts"/Reuven Castro
In a moment, we will continue to Glick's incomprehensible descriptions, but first we will go back a year to the data I published here about how the State of Israel allows the Palestinian Authority to honor its terrorists who are imprisoned with us, and to treat them with respect. Every month, the state allows the Palestinian Authority to deposit – that is, through us, through our prison service and through our postal bank – 400 shekels per terrorist, for shopping and treats in the canteen, in addition to what it allows his family to deposit. Data obtained by Lavi by way of a Freedom of Information request showed that in 2021, 31 million shekels were deposited for the use of the canteen for terrorists.
Additional data collected by Im Tirtzu showed that between 2015 and 2020, deposits for terrorists' canteen services reached NIS 166 million. It should be emphasized that this is not money paid by the PA to the terrorist's family in Nablus, when we can tell ourselves that none of this has anything to do with us. These are funds paid by the PA to terrorists who murdered Jews for their canteen services, money that we transfer with our own hands from the PA to the terrorist. Funds that if it weren't for us, wouldn't have passed. All according to IPS procedures, and according to an orderly tariff: "Hamas prisoners who are residents of the Occupied Territories - up to NIS 800 (in addition to PA funds of NIS 400 a month). Hamas prisoners who are not residents of the Occupied Territories – up to NIS 1,200. Prisoners from other organizations who are residents of the Occupied Territories – up to NIS 1,200 (in addition to PA funds of NIS 400 per month). Prisoners from other organizations who are not residents of the Occupied Territories – up to NIS 1,600."
And in order to understand how clear it was to everyone here that we ourselves were helping the Palestinian Authority improve these murderers with Bamba, bagels, good meat and fresh fish, we uncovered here an amazing document that summarized a fascinating discussion that took place already in 2006 in the office of Shai Nitzan, then deputy state attorney for special duties. This discussion took place after the management of the Postal Bank, through which the funds are transferred, demanded indemnification from the state in case anyone sued it, claiming that when it manages the money transfers to terrorists in prison, it itself is involved in providing retribution for acts of terrorism.
Nitzan, that document taught, found a creative solution. The accounts of terrorists will be registered in the name of the IPS, as trustee/proxy of each and every terrorist, and thus the Postal Bank will be able to tell that it transfers deposits of funds for the IPS, and not for the terrorists. What does this story teach? It was clear to everyone that there was a problem with this transfer of funds by the Palestinian Authority to those who were kind enough to harm the Jews, when the official State of Israel was helping this thing to be carried out. All this madness has always been on the table.
Forbidden equipment hidden by security prisoners in Ramon/Reuven Castro prison
Several types of tuna to choose from
Back to retired Gondar Haim Glick. "Let's start with the food," he suggests. "A security prisoner receives meals from the IPS that home front soldiers receive in the IDF. It's good food and definitely enough. But what? It was decided to let them buy more food in the canteen. Why? After all, I don't have to give them a canteen. It does not appear in the Geneva Convention. So why allow them this bonus? Why should I let them choose a few different types of cigarettes and tuna, and smoked meat, and a thousand and one other things? After all, I gave them food. I've been to a lot of prisons in the United States. This is a country that understands something about democracy and rights. I'm not talking about life prisoners, who can't even move. I'm talking about just heavy criminals.
"Federal prisons in the United States have what's called a 'canteen recommendation.' The prisoner has a box, like a safe, and the service recommends what to buy and put in it. You can put in a bottle of Coke, two buoys, a toothbrush, toothpaste and maybe something else. It explicitly says that if you bought more, you donated it to the Prison Service. If you bought two bottles of Coke, and they are too big and don't fit in that box, they will take you one. Why? Because the common idea when dealing with prisoners is that you have to go into a cell that is completely clean. When I see the prisoner, he has his clothes and his bed, and that's the end of the story. With us, there are places where there is so much equipment in the cell that you don't see the prisoner. When a guard walks into a room full of books and notebooks and blankets and clothes and televisions and fans and CDs, all multiplied by eight people in a cell, his ability to recognize change is zero. But no one wants to upset them.
"Think about the fact that a Fatah prisoner receives a deposit of NIS 1,200 a month for shopping from the canteen, and a Hamas prisoner NIS 800. Why allow them these deposits? Why are we suddenly allowing the PA to get its hands into our prisons? To this day, young security prisoners are allowed to complete matriculation. Today it is done through Arab-Israeli teachers. In the past, a Palestinian Authority representative would come to our prison to pass the matriculation exam. It's madness, after all. The Palestinian Authority sanctifies its murderers as its soldiers, in our prison, and we live with it in peace because we are afraid.
"Do you know a country that transfers money to a canteen for its criminals who are in jail in another country for rape or robbery? But here the PA does not see them as criminals, but as its soldiers. And we cooperate with it. Filled the canteen. We allow them, beyond the canteen, to purchase an extra 3 kg of red meat, fish and fruit. Why? Is it prison or party? Criminal prisoners are not given that. Are terrorists supposed to enjoy conditions that a tax offender does not? And after they buy all that extra food, we also allow them cooking utensils and a hot plate. It's a whole industry of food and treats."
What is the responsibility of the Israel Prison Service for all this, I ask Glick. "I know this argument that the prison service wants quiet," he replies. "First of all, the Israel Prison Service wants the state to lead him and back him. To date, not a single prime minister, minister, or Shin Bet chief has done this. Every time we got into some kind of crisis, the country was frightened of what would happen outside and went backwards. This is true for all Israeli governments. And everything like that has an evolution.
Zakaria Zubeidi, after being caught after his escape from Gilboa Prison/screenshot, without
"It always starts with something small. Look, for example, at televisions. In '84 or '85, then-Police Minister Haim Barlev decided to give them televisions. I was then Assistant Commissioner of the Prison Service. I asked, 'Why are we allowing this?' They said, 'This is our way of educating them.' There was only one channel at the time, everyone watched only it, and there was a thought that if all the terrorists watched alive he understood, they would become Zionists. A few weeks later, I was visiting Nafha Prison and saw wires coming out of all the cells. The prisoners arranged antennas for themselves, gave up Haim Yavin, and watched Egyptian television. That's how it started. Over the years, this has evolved until we have reached a reality in which Fatah members are allowed to choose five channels and Hamas members three. There's a prisoner sitting in the cell, wanting to watch football, so they arrange a football for him. A whole cell of guys sitting, eating, cracking kernels, watching TV, and having fun. It's psychic, after all. Do you know that a security prisoner has the right to invite a private dentist from outside to treat him? Where does it exist in the world?
"You have to understand that if he's a criminal prisoner, I have an interest in him. I want him to come back to society a better person. I want to rehabilitate it. So I give him conversations with the house, I give him a canteen, I give him an education, I give him employment. But with security prisoners, I don't have all that. These are not people who can be changed. In the United States, there are wings where there is no television, and there is nothing in them, and the prisoner sits with himself for 23 hours a day. Our prisons don't deter anyone. The prisoners see them as models of Israeli suckerism. The terrorist's family receives money from the Palestinian Authority, he himself lives with us like a king, prays with the guys, eats with the guys, watches TV with the guys, and in many cases these conditions are better than what he has outside. So what deterrence do you have?
"Does the Geneva Convention require that every prisoner be given an hour of travel? They have a few hours, with sports and ping pong and weights, and I ask where is the punishment here? True, a gold cage is still a cage, but how do I explain to the next bastard that he should think twice, because our prison is not a sanatorium? I still remember the days when the Palestinian Authority would send food to its prisoners in trucks. Just like that. My poor guards in Ashkelon would unload a truck of watermelons and pass them one by one through the metal detectors. It's a long-standing evolution that brought us here."
"I'm going back to the United States again because that's where these matters are taken seriously," Glick continues. "One time I was there on a visit and I asked the prison commander about a particular prisoner, how long he was sentenced. He told me, 'For 900 years, you can't reduce a third.' Kidding. I didn't understand what the matter was. What difference does it make if it's 900 years or 600 years. "Let him not be confused," the commander explained to me, "he stays here with me for the rest of his life, and he needs to know that we take his story very seriously."
"Take the story of the speakers of the wings. They created a situation in which within the prisons there is shadow leadership. There are the arch-terrorists who sit in the back and decide everything, and according to them everything will be launched, and they have a monkey in front, who is the official spokesman and who stands in front of the prison administration. They created an orderly structure. "We are an organization, and you talk to us only in an orderly manner. Through the speaker.' If I personally address one of the prisoners, he won't talk to me. He'll point to the speaker and tell me, 'Talk to him, it's all through him.' Over the years, it has become a crazy tool. Evolution has led to the fact that when they wanted to prevent or reduce strikes, speakers would be moved from prison to prison in a prison service vehicle so that they could meet and settle matters. I don't believe there is such a thing in the world. The Hamas spokesman in Shikma met with the Hamas spokesman in Megiddo, under our auspices.
"In the situation to which we were led, if I have an argument with one specific prisoner in the IPS, within two minutes the great State of Israel finds itself in trouble with Yahya Sinwar or with Abu Mazen. With our own hands, we turned every terrorist into a soldier in their army. Do you know that terrorists can order newspapers? Do you know they have a library where they can exchange books? That they can receive and send postcards and letters? They laugh at us. We treat human animals like we treat a rose garden in Holland. I don't know if you know, but the prisoners The security forces waste water endlessly. Leave water open. Deliberately. For years, the IPS tried to shut it down. Give them water by the hour. They told us, 'If you deny them water, we will be in conflict with Abu Mazen.' "Will you prevent them from traveling? Abu Mazen.' Anything, Abu Mazen. He will say that security prisoners are being harmed, and all the territories will go up in the air. This is exactly the concept that led us to do nothing in the Gaza Strip.
"Take another example. There is a very humane decision that says that if I want to move prisoners from prison to prison, as we do from time to time so that they do not get used to the same place, they must be given advance notice at least one evening before. In other words, if he wants to hide something, or if he was in the middle of digging a tunnel, we allow him to transfer all these assets to someone else. Why notify him in advance? After all, this is innocence that cannot be tolerated."
Gilboa Prison, from which six security prisoners escaped in 2021/Reuters
When Arden bumped into the wall
And if we mentioned the issue of the mobility of prisoners, here is a story revealed last December by my colleague Moshe Steinmetz in Kan 11, a story that taught how then-Public Security Minister Omer Barlev stopped such mobilization of security prisoners, and mainly showed how afraid we are of our own shadow. The Israel Security Agency warned at the time that if we moved the prisoners, "the organizations outside would not remain indifferent." NSC representatives also joined in, threatening that "a major prisoners' strike would be a trigger for escalation." Minister Bar-Lev heard and was convinced. And it's important for me to clarify. Bar-Lev was no worse than those before and after him. This is, as Glick describes, a phenomenon that has been with us for decades.
Still, it seems that one minister, Gilad Erdan, was trying to change something. He spoke about what happened to him in February 2022 in an amazing testimony before the commission of inquiry into the escape from Gilboa Prison. Erdan, today our ambassador to the United Nations, shared his frustration with the committee members. The Shin Bet, the Justice Ministry, the prime minister, every time someone else pressed the brakes, told – and prevented changes. In the testimony, which shows more than many other documents how we got where we were, the former public security minister shared what happened when he established the Qatabi Committee, which examined the extreme conditions of security prisoners and recommended changing the situation. "The Shin Bet targeted the report. They presented a document of horror scenarios that wrote what might happen if we implemented the report, without a realistic foothold on the ground."
But that's nothing else. Erdan spoke about what he went through when he decided to activate a cellular block in the prisons, so that terrorists who manage to smuggle mobile devices will not be able to talk to their friends outside the organization. He described two years of work and a large financial investment that preceded the moment when the system was supposed to be operational, when terrorists began threatening demonstrations, violence and hunger strikes.
"That morning, I am holding a discussion about how to contain a terrorist strike, including the heads of the health system, when I press for more beds and for the strike not to threaten anyone... Terrorists who hear all the time that this is being worked on are already beginning to threaten that if the pilot is launched, there will be violence inside the prisons, there may be a strike, etc... And of course the instruction is mine, that no matter what the threat is, the response must be containment and dealing with it to the end, in order to activate it, because it is unthinkable otherwise. In the end it comes. I skip the local phenomena... Burning cells and the like. Let them burn and live with the burnt mattresses.
"And then the main threat created was Hamas, which announced that it would start a hunger strike. And I, in advance, in order to deal with hunger strikes and so that there would be no need to surrender to them, or that there would be no such threat that they would flood the civilian hospitals and suddenly hundreds of terrorists would occupy hospital beds of Israeli citizens, I greatly increased the hospitalization capacity within the IPS... We prepared reception facilities in hospital basements in separate wings. All so that strikes can be dealt with... In the afternoon, I am called to the Prime Minister for a discussion. I come to the hearing and the head of the Shin Bet, Nadav Argaman, is sitting opposite him... And a discussion begins about what to do in the face of the strike. I said to him, 'What do you mean, what do we do? They don't do anything, they activate the barriers.' (And he tells me - K.L.) "Yes, but there are estimates, etc."
The bottom line, says the head of the Shin Bet at the time, is that they think that under these circumstances it is possible to offer terrorists public telephones as an alternative, and that it would be better if a negotiating team be established, in which the Shin Bet would also be included, and the idea is to reach some kind of understanding."
Extension of the detention of Muhammad 'Ardah, who escaped from Gilboa/Yoav Etiel Prison
"The main thing is to be quiet"
"My jaws dropped," Arden later said. "I have to say that I came back very, very depressed from this discussion. The next day we received a written decision from the National Security Council instructing me exactly according to what I just described, to enter into this kind of dialogue. That threat actually worked. The barriers are not activated. They resorted to violence against prison guards, and the result is that the State of Israel stopped the operation of the barriers. So when it comes to organizational culture, I look at the culture of the entire organization called the State of Israel."
How did it end? The terrorists also succeeded in burying the initiative to install barriers in front of them, and also in receiving public phones that they never had before.
Haim Glick prefers not to get into politics and names. A decades-long perspective taught him that there are very few righteous people in this story. "There has not been anyone in all these years – not prime ministers, not ministers, not heads of the Shin Bet – who has done anything here from a systemic perspective in order to change. They all lived under the concept that when you touch them, you set the Arab street on fire. It's easier to let them continue to eat like pigs and get money from the PA, as long as it's quiet. This cannot change at the initiative of the IPS. The IPS has the knowledge and ability to deal with anything, it is not looking for quiet, it wants deterrence, but it must come from above.
"The current perception is exactly the same one that led us to do nothing about Hamas in the Gaza Strip. How it ends, we know."
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