Investigation of entry permits to Israel – Truth or Pike?

According to an investigation published on Channel 12, as of last Saturday evening, every ultra-Orthodox who lands at Ben-Gurion Airport is immediately suspected of arranging for himself a permit to enter Israel in improper ways. A study broadcast under the headline “Failure to Close the Sky: Machers, Combinations and Protections to Enter Israel” claimed that between 60 and 80 percent of the next citizens at the country’s gates are ultra-Orthodox – a much higher number than their relative share of the population. The editor of the investigation, Alon Lukacs, interviewed Haaretz journalist Uri Misgav, who claimed that he himself counted the ultra-Orthodox passengers who passed through Ben Gurion Airport, and that he was significantly taller than the rest of the public.

Additional investigators from the authors of the investigation interviewed two ultra-Orthodox passengers, who admitted that they did use fake credentials. Alongside these, it was alleged in the investigation that the aides of Knesset members from the ultra-Orthodox parties are stirring up the decisions of the Exceptions Committee, which issues the permits for entry into Israel, and that they take care of arranging permits for those who apply to them. Lukacs concludes the article with a “working assumption” that the Exceptions Committee operates for political motives, allowing only right-wing and ultra-Orthodox voters to return to Israel to influence the outcome of the upcoming elections.

But an in-depth examination of the facts presents a different picture.

Deputy Director General of the Ministry of Transportation, Sheila Adler, who serves as chairman of the Exceptions Committee, told Erel Segal in an interview on Channel 20 that the Exceptions Committee employs about 70 representatives from seven government ministries, closely accompanied by legal advisers from the various ministries.

According to Adler, every day about 4,000 applications are received by the Exceptions Committee for a permit to enter the country – some are approved immediately according to pre-determined criteria, such as leaving abroad before January 25, and some are rejected. The other part is exceptional requests for humanitarian reasons. Before the members of the committee, Without the members having knowledge of the sectoral identity of the applicant. In some cases applicants are required to present additional documents and certificates. In any case, the decision as to who to approve and who not, is made by the committee members, and by them alone.

In addition, Adler said that the State of Israel has approved 13 weekly rescue flights to bring Israeli citizens – 10 of them take off from Frankfurt and the rest from New York. The high number of ultra-Orthodox passengers does not surprise him, because even during routine times, the number of ultra-Orthodox passengers on the Tel Aviv-New York route is very high in comparison.

Sheila Adler expressed his surprise that the editors of the investigation did not bother to contact him for explanations about the work of the committee in his possession.

And this is indeed puzzling: how do veteran and experienced media people publish an investigation without checking the facts ?! However, after examining the background and statements from the past of the participants in the preparation of the article, it can be assumed as a “job assumption” in the words of Lukacs, that not a journalistic work was in front of the editors, but a completely different goal.

Riddle: Who said “the ultra-Orthodox are more dangerous than the Iranian threat”?

Ilan Lukacs, it turns out, does not like, to say the least, the ultra-Orthodox and religion in general. In the Makor Rishon newspaper, reporter Yishai Friedman revealed his extreme views that the ultra-Orthodox are “a bunch of Khomeini retards who take over life,” he defines Judaism as a “retarded religion based on error,” and even recommended “educating your children to despise black wearers. In clinical retardation with a mental disorder. “

Lukacs has already shown that he has no impediment to using his journalistic work to harm the ultra-Orthodox. In the past, he did so when he edited an article that portrayed the ultra-Orthodox in a negative light as “taking over” his neighborhood.

Journalist Uri Misgav also garnered quite a few hate speeches against the ultra-Orthodox. He only recently wrote that: “The ultra-Orthodox today are more dangerous to Israel’s present and future than Hezbollah missiles and the Iranian nuclear program”

But the person who exposed the “spirit of the commander” who guided the way the “investigation” was conducted is his researcher – Amit Kaminsky, in her Facebook profile she introduces herself as a member of the “Lech” camp who fights for the removal of Prime Minister Netanyahu Here with Lukacs’ response, a tweet that shows that the whole purpose of the investigation was trending and intended to harm politically, so that she and the camp she belongs to “in the end we will win” …

The tweet, by the way, was hastily deleted after provoking a storm on social media.

“The whole article is a lie”

The deliberate political and anti-Haredi bias of the investigation constitutes a blatant violation according to the second authority’s ethics guide which states in section 2 that: “A franchisee shall distinguish in his broadcasts between factual reporting and expression of opinion, interpretation or analysis of information.”

Following this, B’Tselem filed a complaint with the commissioner of the second authority, claiming that the investigation is “Pike News and the entire article is a lie, incitement, generalization, violation of the rules of ethics, lack of response from the recipients of the article and is a conspiracy itself.”

Is it to be expected that the Council of the Second Authority will prosecute Channel 12 and the editors of the investigation or even punish them? Past experience shows that beyond a dry laconic response, apparently, nothing will happen.

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