Israel’s Shin Bet has been warning that the unit of the police in charge of dealing with Jewish extremist crime in the West Bank has been ignoring reports of crimes committed by Jewish extremists. As we read in Haaretz:

The Shin Bet division in charge of Jewish terror has been claiming in closed door arguments that the Police’s Central Unit in Judea and Samaria is failing to deal with violent settlers and rightist extremists in the West Bank, leading to a rift between the two authorities.

Shin Bet officials say the unit’s commander, Commander Avishai Mualem, denies the increase in Jewish terror in the West Bank and does not respond to security service officials from the Jewish terror division when they attempt to contact him.

Until recent years, the police’s Judea and Samaria unit collaborated with the Shin Bet. The latter would pass on intelligence on right-wing Jewish extremist and terrorist networks in the West Bank, and the police acted as its enforcing authority there.

The unit arrested suspects tagged by the Shin Bet as being involved in Jewish terrorism, issued administrative restraining orders and conducted interrogations of suspected terrorists.

However, in recent weeks, the two sides have met only when a third party, such as the Justice Ministry, calls for a meeting.

The West Bank police unit’s commander, Avishai Mualem is politically and ideologically close to Itamar Ben-Gvir of the Otzma Yehudit (“Jewish Power”) party. Several defense establishment sources said that “when Mualem talks, it’s like you can hear Ben-Gvir talking.” They also reported how, within recent weeks, the West Bank unit who is in charge of dealing with Jewish terrorism almost never arrests anyone, and nor does it monitor Shin Bet suspects or gathers intelligence data on them. In this year, the number of Jewish terror suspects who have been arrested is half what it was last year, regardless of the fact that data provided by “the Shin Bet to the Justice Ministry shows the number of incidents has risen by tens of percent.” A high-level Justice Ministry official stated:

“The Judea and Samaria central unit doesn’t exist when it comes to Jewish terror… They only act when they have no choice, for example, when an incident has been filmed. … It’s embarrassing to see the IDF and the Shin Bet talking about a growing phenomenon, and suddenly the police are talking about a decline or a non-existent phenomenon. They’re ignoring the danger of Jewish terrorism.”

Its almost like there are two Israels: one that wants to keep the status-quo of a secular and moderate country, and the other which wants a Jewish theocratic state, where ideological violence is acceptable as long as it is done by right-wing Jews, and where the idea of ethno-nationalism is considered supreme.