Attorney Menashe Yado of the Honenu legal aid organization has filed a petition with Israel's Supreme Court on behalf of several right-wing activists, seeking to overturn a compensation agreement reached with 13 left-wing protesters who underwent strip searches during demonstrations.
According to the petition, the state agreed to pay the protesters a total of NIS 624,000, with each individual receiving NIS 48,000.
The petitioners argue that in similar cases involving right-wing activists, compensation awards have typically amounted to only about NIS 10,000. Yado pointed out that this disparity constitutes unjustified discrimination.
The petition states that Honenu has represented protesters subjected to invasive searches for years, and that court rulings and settlement agreements in comparable cases generally award around NIS 10,000, with exceptional cases reaching only about NIS 15,000.
According to the petitioners, there is no justification for awarding significantly higher compensation to left-wing protesters while right-wing protesters and demonstrators from other sectors receive substantially lower sums under similar circumstances. They are asking the court to issue an interim injunction freezing implementation of the settlement pending a ruling on the petition.
"There is absolutely no justification, and it is outrageous, that left-wing protesters receive compensation three to four times higher than the amounts established by case law, while right-wing protesters - or protesters from other sectors - receive only a quarter of that amount," the petition states.
The petition further alleges that "this is unequal treatment, which with all due respect stems from the identification and bias of officials who are supposed to act according to civil and egalitarian principles, but in practice made acted to make an improper, discriminatory, and painful decision, which the petitioners seek to halt it through an interim injunction and have it reviewed, with the assumption that it will ultimately be overturned."
Yado also noted that settlement "strips the State Attorney's Office of the principles it is supposed to uphold, including the obligation to protect the operational ability of the police, the interest of protecting the public purse or the police budget in particular, and the supreme value of equality has been erased from the books."
"No less significant is the damage to public's trust in the law enforcement authorities and preserving the consistency and predictability of court rulings, all for the sake of the protest and the purportedly noble goal of toppling the right-wing government and deterring the police from confronting aggressive left-wing demonstrations against the Prime Minister."