The fingerprints of the Kohelet Policy Forum are all over Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s plan to enfeeble Israel’s judicial system – even though members of the conservative think tank, which seeks to “broaden individual liberty and free-market principles in Israel,” refuse to say whether and how deeply they were involved in preparing it. It now seems, however, that was not enough for Kohelet. An organization linked to the forum has been involved in drafting a document distributed in November 2022 – at the height of the coalition negotiations – which included a string of proposals that were later raised as demands by representatives of Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Religious Zionism Party. Some of these recommendations were enshrined in the coalition agreements, such as the proposal to change the name of the Ministry of Public Security to the Ministry of National Security.

The proposals were put forward in a document that was written by Maj. Gen. (res.) Israel Ziv, the former head of the IDF’s Operations Directorate, and edited by Dr. Anat Roth, the CEO of the Shiloh Policy Forum, established by Kohelet. The document was presented at a conference at the International Convention Center in Jerusalem by a group calling itself the Forum for Security, Governance, and Settlement. Among the 170 signatories on the document are former top IDF officials like Giora Eiland, Eyal Ben-Reuven, Amos Yadlin, and Amos Gilad, as well as several former police commissioners and the former head of the Money Laundering and Terror Financing Prohibition Authority.

Work on the document began in the summer, and it was distributed when coalition negotiations were at a highly delicate stage – and just three days after Ben-Gvir demanded a name change for the ministry he was about to be given. The very same recommendation to change from the Ministry of Public Security to the Ministry of National Security appears in this document, along with others that are highly reminiscent of Ben-Gvir’s election agenda.

“What came first in terms of the idea? I won’t get into that. It’s gossip. The main thing is the goal,” one of the main people behind the initiative, speaking anonymously, told Shomrim. The author of the document, Yisrael Ziv, is a lot less vague, confirming that he was in contact with Ben-Gvir’s camp during the coalition negotiations. “They wanted to consult with us. I spoke with some of his people, who wanted to understand things a little more profoundly. They were informal discussions, which took place before the government was established,” he says. “We did not agree to hold official meetings with them because we didn’t yet know if they were going to be appointed, so there were no official meetings.”

According to Ziv, “it may well be that they copied or lifted from there. That’s fine. No one here will sue them for copyright infringement.” Ziv is at pains to point out that changing the ministry’s name to the Ministry of National Security only appeared in earlier versions of the document; in the amended version, the preferred name is the Ministry of National Public Security.

It is interesting to note in this context that Ben-Gvir, who was criticized for his demand to expand his authority over the Israel Police, as well as for the expansion of the Ministry of National Security’s powers, made no use of the document or its signatories when he was asked by interviewers to justify his demands. Could it be that he foresaw the public storm that would erupt over the involvement of the Kohelet Policy Forum in the government’s plans to undermine the authority of the judicial system – and opted to distance himself from it? Shomrim sent a series of questions to Ben-Gvir, who chose not to respond. A spokesperson for Kohelet said in response that “the Shiloh Policy Forum is an independent organization.” Roth said in response that the document has no party political affiliation. Her full response appears at the end of this article.

According to Ziv, “it may well be that they copied or lifted from there. That’s fine. No one here will sue them for copyright infringement.” Ziv is at pains to point out that changing the ministry’s name to the Ministry of National Security only appeared in earlier versions of the document; in the amended version, the preferred name is the Ministry of National Public Security.

The Kohelet Connection

The Forum for Security, Governance and Settlement, which compiled the document, is an amalgam of two unofficial other organizations. The first is a group of former senior Israeli defense officials, which was formed by Maj.-Gen. (Res.) Dr. Yom-Tov Samia, which started its activities around two years ago with the stated goal of increasing personal security in the Negev. The second group is the Lev Hagalil Forum, which is spearheaded by the Shiloh Policy Forum, and its activists include, as well as former military people, local and regional council heads from the Galilee.

According to the Shiloh Policy Forum website, the organization is a “research and policy institute, which aims to provide information regarding Jewish settlement in every part of the Land of Israel – as well as the related challenges, needs, importance and moral justification thereof.” Its connection to the Kohelet Policy Forum, a well-funded research body considered to have had the most influence over the Israeli right in the past decade, is underplayed on its website but is mentioned in some of Shiloh’s publications and in other reports. For example, in 2020, Kohelet paid the salary of Shiloh’s only salaried employee that year. In some of its publications, Shiloh refers to itself as having been “founded by the Kohelet Policy Forum” and mentions that it had common board members. In its report to the Registrar of Associations, Shiloh describes its connection to Kohelet as “common goals and common functionaries.”

The chairman of the Shiloh Policy Forum is Benzi Lieberman, a former head of the Yesha Council of Jewish Settlements in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza District and one-time chairman of Israel Lands Authority. The CEO of the forum and the editor of the document in question, Anat Roth, is described on the website as a former adviser to three leaders of the Labor Party and as “a researcher into the Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria and the author of ‘The Secret of its Strength: The Yesha Council and its Campaign Against the Security Fence and the Disengagement Plan’ (2005) and ‘Not at any cost – From Gush Katif to Amona: the story behind the struggle over the Land of Israel’ (2014). 

We asked Ziv whether Shiloh’s involvement in the document was limited to Roth’s editing? “The Shiloh Policy Forum does not appear here as the Shiloh Forum, and we do not receive funding or support from them,” he claimed. “Since the Shiloh Forum is involved in issues relating to the Galilee and settlements, we did not force them out. We welcome their people and want to be their partners in activity.”

The Document and Negotiation Demands

The document includes criticism of the civil service and the High Court, which is accused of spearheading a policy of affirmative action which favors the Arab population, alongside the Israel Land Authority and the Planning Administration. “Within three decades, the outcome [of this policy] is clear for all to see: a dramatic decline in the proportion of Jewish residents both in the Galilee and the Negev,’ the document argues.

Regarding the civil service, the document says: “Key public institutions in the State of Israel have, over the past decade, been characterized by a tendency to form independent policy, which is guided by the worldviews of the bureaucrats appointed to the head of these bodies. The enfeeblement of the political echelon given the process of increased judicial involvement and political instability have undermined the process of oversight and supervision and have turned civil servants in state bodies into a kind of shadow government, which formulates its own policies.”

Here too, the example provided relates to affirmative action in the realm of land ownership. The concrete recommendations in the document are the completion of the amendment to the so-called Admissions Committee Law, as was passed in its first reading during the term of the previous Knesset. The amendment would allow for the expansion of admissions committees from 400 families in the Negev and the Galilee to 700 families, including in areas closer to the country’s center, such as Lachish, Adullam, Iron, Judea and Samaria. The amendment was proposed by right-wing Knesset members Nir Orbach and Orit Strock, with the support of then Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked.

In the coalition agreements reached with Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit, there is a clause stating that the Admissions Committee Law will be expanded to 1,000 families and apply to Judea and Samaria.

Like other clauses in the coalition agreements – with Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit – the documents also recommends expanding the exemption from tender for allocating land for housing for every member of the security forces (and not just for the IDF), as well as the establishment of semi-rural neighborhoods on the outskirts of cities in the Galilee and the Negev, to be allocated to organized groups of immigrants, members of sought-after professions and so on. Taken as a whole, the proposals would mean an expansion of land allocation for Jewish-only settlements. For other clauses, see the table below.

Maj.-Gen. (Res.) Amos Gilad says that while he is familiar with the document, he made a mistake by signing it. “There were other elements which did not seem right to me, one of them being a recommendation to turn the Ministry of Public Security into the Ministry of National Security. I was rash when I signed it. That’s not like me, but everyone makes mistakes … I joined because I wanted to restore governance, but I should have looked into it more closely.”

Yadlin: I Never Signed the Document

According to Ziv, all of the senior figures who appear as signatories to the document signed it and are aware of the contents. However, conversations with some of them paint a very different picture. Some of them expressed reservations about the fact that their signature was used or about some of the document’s content. Amos Yadlin, for example, who was once the Zionist Union’s candidate for defense minister, told Shomrim that he had not signed any such document. “I severed my ties with them about a year ago – and I am not familiar with the Shiloh Policy Forum,” he said. “It was a body that started by focusing on violence and personal security in the Negev, but then it went in all kinds of directions that I was not comfortable with, and I decided to disconnect. I am not even a member of their WhatsApp group.”

Are the directions that you refer to nationalistic directions?

“Let’s leave it at that.”

Maj.-Gen. (Res.) Amos Gilad says that while he is familiar with the document, he made a mistake by signing it. “There were other elements which did not seem right to me, one of them being a recommendation to turn the Ministry of Public Security into the Ministry of National Security. I was rash when I signed it. That’s not like me, but everyone makes mistakes … I joined because I wanted to restore governance, but I should have looked into it more closely.”

Maj.-Gen. (Res.) Eyal Ben-Reuven, who is also a former Knesset member, is aware of the forum and its activities, having participated in several tours that it organized. MKs Bezalel Smotrich and Orit Strock also participated in one of these tours during the election campaign before they became ministers. In a conversation with Shomrim, Ben-Reuven angrily rejects the suggestion that he is politically or ideologically aligned with Ben-Gvir. “I do not support Ben-Gvir,” he said. “He is not a worthy person.” When we read back to Ben-Reuven the clause in the document calling for the renaming of the Ministry of Public Security, he claimed that he was unaware of it. “Does that appear in the document? If so, I don’t like it. It’s a mistake. The last thing that Ben-Gvir can say of himself is that he is the minister of national security. It’s nonsense. National security is an amalgamation of things, including Iran. An imbalanced population leads to bad things, and the population of the Galilee today is 86 percent Arab, compared to 14 percent Jews. In the future, that could lead to all kinds of demands, like in Catalonia, where a minority becomes the majority in one geographical area and, in the future, it starts to make demands.”

Former top police officer David Tzur, who served as a member of Knesset in Tzipi Livni’s Hatnua party, also rejects the proposal to rename the ministry, adding that he is no longer active in the Forum for Security, Governance and Settlement. “I was a member for a limited time. We held meetings with the police on the matter of governance. The moment it became a settler forum, it went in a direction I did not like. I am not opposed to acceptance committees, I just stop dealing with the matter.”

Another signatory, Yehuda Shaffer, also has reservations, but his are less acute. “I would not have expressed myself in that way about civil servants and the judiciary,” he says, “but I agree with the central message: we need an overall plan to improve governance. That is a message that the entire political system should adopt and promote.”