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The brother of Israel’s internal security chief has been charged with “assisting the enemy in wartime” for his alleged role in a smuggling network taking cigarettes and other goods into Gaza during an Israeli blockade of the occupied Palestinian territory.
Bezalel Zini was one of more than 10 people charged in relation to the alleged network. His brother, David Zini, is the head of the Shin Bet, the domestic intelligence agency. He was appointed by the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, last May and began the job in October.
Israel has long controlled all goods going into Gaza and enforced a total blockade at the height of the war that led to widespread famine. Smuggling was rife under blockade, and cigarettes were a luxury for the very few. At the peak of the conflict, a single cigarette could sell for $15 (£11) and a carton of 50 packets could cost nearly $15,000 (£11,060).
It is alleged that some Israeli soldiers taking part in the devastation of Gaza, in which more than 70,000 Palestinians have been killed, were also profiting from a campaign that is considered by a UN independent commission and human rights organisations to be a genocide.
According to his indictment announced on Thursday, Bezalel Zini, 50, is suspected of smuggling approximately 14 cartons of cigarettes into Gaza on three separate trips into the occupied territory, for which he allegedly received roughly $120,000 (£88,700).
The justice ministry accused Zini and his co-defendants of “assisting the enemy in wartime, performing transactions in property for terrorist purposes, obtaining something by fraud under aggravated circumstances, and taking bribes”.
“A central category of prohibited goods smuggled into the strip was tobacco and cigarettes, which have put a total of hundreds of millions of shekels into Hamas’s coffers since the start of the war,” a ministry statement said.
The ministry said the network also smuggled iPhones, batteries, car parts and other goods into Gaza, alongside cigarettes, in an operation it said began last year.
Zini’s defence lawyers said their client denied the charges. “Regarding the offence of aiding the enemy during wartime, it is a complete inversion of reality,” Haaretz quoted the legal team as saying. The lawyers played down the severity of the alleged offences, arguing: “It’s only about cigarettes [and] any claim of aiding the enemy is baseless.”
Zini is officially an Israeli army reservist but was also part of a small semi-official unit known as the Uriah Force, substantially made up of rightwing extremist volunteers, who reportedly brought bulldozers and other heavy equipment into Gaza and took part in widespread demolitions during the war. According to an investigation last September in Haaretz, the Uriah Force operated outside the official army chain of command.
The indictment accuses Zini of “exploiting his position” and using the cover of moving Uriah Force equipment in and out of Gaza to smuggle the cigarettes.
The rightwing newspaper Israel Hayom criticised the silence of the Shin Bet chief, David Zini, over his brother’s involvement in the affair.
“Zini should not be punished for his brother’s actions (assuming he is convicted),” the newspaper said. “But he must tell the Israeli public the truth about treason allegations and other conspiracy theories, including in connection to the current affair.”
