The top posts in Israel's national police force are now in the hands of hardline religious settlers who are seeking to make "alarming" changes to policing in both Israel and the occupied territories, critics have warned.
The growing influence of the settler movement was highlighted this month with the appointment of Rahamim Brachyahu as the force's chief rabbi. He lives in Talmon, a settlement close to the Palestinian city of Ramallah in the West Bank. [...]
That has raised deep concern among Palestinian leaders because Brachyahu has defended a notorious rabbinical handbook for settlers known as the King's Torah. It argues that Jewish religious law justifies killing Palestinians as a preventative measure - including children in case they grow up to become "terrorists". [...]
The gradual infiltration of religious settlers into the police has mirrored a similar process in the Israeli army that began two decades ago, noted Jafar Farah, director of Mossawa, a political advocacy group for Israel's large Palestinian minority.
Although the so-called national religious community - who adhere to the ideology of the settlers - make up only 10 per cent of Israel's population, recent figures suggest that as many as half of all new army recruits are drawn from their ranks."There is a clear coalition of interest between the right-wing government and the settler leadership to get their people into high positions in the major state institutions, including the security services, the courts and the media," he told Al Jazeera.
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