State Prosecutor Amit Isman said on Thursday that the main challenge for Israel’s law-enforcement system is no longer only investigating cases and filing indictments, but ensuring the law is enforced equally even when that is uncomfortable or controversial. Speaking at the Haifa Conference on Law, he said there is now “a direct or indirect attempt to exert pressure on decision-makers in law-enforcement bodies,” and added that the public noise around cases should not affect professional decisions.
Isman stressed that “noise is not evidence,” headlines are not a factual basis, and likes or shares are not a legal test. He said the Justice Ministry’s prosecution service works in an era where unreliable information spreads quickly, often without context, sometimes accidentally and sometimes deliberately by interested parties trying to shape a political narrative. “We do not operate according to an algorithm, we operate according to evidence,” he said, adding that the office’s role is not to please anyone, take sides in public disputes, or join the public debate, but to decide only according to the evidence and the law.
He warned that the same facts can receive radically different interpretations depending on one’s position, and said that when ideology comes before facts, truth is pushed aside and professional decisions are attacked simply because they do not serve a particular camp. He said there is one principle “not open to negotiation,” that the law does not change according to who is under investigation. Anti-corruption enforcement, he said, is not political, but a struggle for integrity and for the democratic system’s legitimacy, because “no one is above the law,” even when powerful.
Isman also addressed the new law on the Police Internal Investigations Department, known as Mahash, which passed its second and third readings in the Knesset earlier this month. He acknowledged that Mahash had faced justified criticism over the years, but said it had functioned as part of the State Attorney’s Office as a professional and independent body without political involvement in its decisions. He argued that the law is about more than organizational structure, because a democracy must ensure that bodies overseeing law enforcement can work without fear or dependence. Under the law, Mahash will become an independent unit in the Justice Ministry with its own budget, empowered to investigate and prosecute police officers for criminal offenses, including minor offenses, as well as offenses committed by police volunteers.
