The Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have come under fire this week for ordering the arrest without charges of an acclaimed documentary filmmaker while he was working on a movie exposing the internal security service’s alleged injustices.
Avraham Shapira, a 29-year-old father of four from Yitzhar in Samaria, was arrested on Aug. 22 and put in administrative detention for six months, Channel 14 reporter Shimon Riklin revealed on Monday.
“Avraham Shapira, with whom I worked on my film ‘The Shin Bet Knew,’ was arrested by the Shin Bet under administrative arrest on Aug. 22,” Riklin said on Monday, noting that the detention of his cameraman will likely prevent the documentary from being released in November.
Attorney Adi Keidar of the Honenu legal-aid group representing Shapira called the arrest “a serious violation of freedom of speech.” Shapira’s investigative documentaries have aired on Israel’s Kan public broadcaster and were screened at various film festivals in recent years.
Shapira is currently working on “an investigation about the activities of the Shin Bet in the 1990s, including embarrassing affairs for the Shin Bet such as the use of instigator agents, the use of [undercover ISA agent] Avishai Raviv among the settlers and other stories that will shake the country,” said Keidar, echoing accusations that the Shin Bet was partially responsible for the murder of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
The Shin Bet issued a statement on Monday claiming that the filmmaker is a “violent and extreme activist involved in directing hilltop youth and young men to carry out violent activities in the Samaria region.
“Shapira was arrested as part of a police investigation on suspicions that he took part in the terrorist events in Kfar Jit on Aug. 15, during which a Palestinian was murdered, and four houses were set on fire,” according to the Shin Bet. Jit is five miles northwest of Yitzhar, south of Nablus.
“He did not cooperate, and in the absence of a criminal [prosecution] alternative, it was decided to put him under administrative arrest due to the great danger of his continued activity,” the agency said. “The false claim that Shapira was arrested for being a ‘film director’ is unfounded.”
Jerusalem asserts that administrative detention is necessary to prevent attacks or to detain dangerous terror suspects without sharing evidence that could endanger vital intelligence sources. Since Gallant took office in December 2022, the use of administrative detention against Jewish Israelis has reached an all-time high, right-wing groups have claimed.
“Gallant became a marionette and a rubber stamp of the Shin Bet,” Tally Gotliv, a fellow lawmaker for the ruling Likud Party, tweeted on Monday. “Utilizing its thuggish power and based on despicable lies, the Shin Bet convinced Gallant to approve the administrative arrest of film director Avraham Shapira, a resident of Yitzhar, a man of values and good.”
“All because Shapira ‘dared’ to touch the holy of holies and take part in a film dealing with Rabin’s murder and the Shin Bet’s involvement in the incident,” the Israeli coalition lawmaker added in the post on X.
Knesset member Limor Son Har-Melech (Otzma Yehudit) tweeted: “This is how the system works: The draconian administrative arrests started out against the hilltop boys, a quiet group that rarely receives media attention and the public stage, and when the Shin Bet saw that this passed quietly, they expanded the use also against those who dare to criticize them.
“Avraham Shapira, a respected documentary filmmaker and a father of children, was picked up from his home and arrested, without evidence and without a trial because he dared to reveal the truth,” she added.
The arrest was also criticized by the family of Elyakim Libman, a 23-year-old security guard who was murdered during Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre at the Nova music festival near Israel’s southern border. Shapira was working on a documentary commemorating Libman’s life and heroism after his remains were discovered some four months ago.
“Avraham received an administrative arrest order, which is supposed to be used against our enemy who wants to destroy us and not against brothers from among our people,” father Eliyahu Liebman wrote in a sharp letter to Shin Bet head Ronen Bar cited by local news outlets.
“Not only did the Shin Bet not do its job and failed us twice when it did not protect our Elyakim Shlomo and his uncle Shneur Shlomo [who was murdered by a terrorist in 1998], after whom Elyakim is named. Now, it also hurts us in the soft underbelly by not allowing Avraham to continue working on the materials he captured in difficult moments, with great sensitivity during the long and difficult search for Elyakim,” he said.
