Israeli police try to launch ’emergency investigation’ of activist, protest movement leader

washingtonblade.com:

A prominent Israeli LGBTQ and intersex rights activist says authorities tried to launch an investigation against her because she is one of the leaders of the protest movement against the government’s proposed judicial reforms.

Hila Peer, chair of the Aguda, the Association for LGBTQ Equality in Israel, told the Washington Blade the police called her on Sunday morning about “an emergency investigation for my involvement and suspicion of disturbing the peace.” “I turned to my organization and the protest organizations to get out the word that they were calling me in,” said Peer, who said she was told to report to a police station at 1:30 p.m. “A few hours after that, with immense public pressure and public attention and articles that came out about it, they called me 10 minutes before the investigation was supposed to take place … they called me at 20 past one to say you know what, never mind, you don’t need to show up.” Peer told the Blade that press reports a few hours later “got information from a leak from inside the police that they were trying to calling me in” to interrogate her about “underground” protests that took place in Tel Aviv on Fridays in August.  “It’s a very lame excuse,” said Peer. “Throughout the month of August schools are on break and I was home every Friday with my babies, meaning I was not even present in any of those protests.” The Aguda is among the myriad groups that have participated in protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government’s efforts to reform the Israeli judicial system.

Netanyahu in March postponed them after a nationwide strike paralyzed the country. The Knesset in July approved a bill that would, among other things, increase the government’s control over judicial appointments and diminish the Supreme Court’s ability to strike down laws.

Peer said the government over the last two months has tried “to threaten the heads of the protests, randomly calling people in for no apparent reason for