Mutiny

As mentioned before, the police and the MAGAV have two responsibilities - classic counter crime police activity and CT. In 1994 when Hefet'z, the founder of the unit was appointed as the new police commissioner, he focused most of his attention on the CT part.

While the CT activity, in Hefet'z time as the police commissioner, was very effective, the crime level reached new picks, especially with the massive immigration from the former Soviet Union bringing organized and sophisticated crime to Israel.

In 1998, after Hefet’z retirement from the IP, a new police commissioner was appointed - Yehouda Vileck. Unlike Hefet'z, Vileck didn't have any SF background. He served as a regular police officer and came up in the ranks the old fashion way.

When he was appointed, Vileck decided to focus the police attention on classic police work. As far as the two elite civilian units YAMAM and Gideonim it meant that the units will no longer be pure CT units, but will emerge into more SWAT type units, performing  special police missions.

In order to insure that the units will follow his intention Vileck decided to appoints new CO to both units that will be obligated to him rather then to the unit. Of course, the units didn't take it too well. Both unit Gideonim and especially Unit YAMAM always had a self image of elite military units, rather then civilian ones, especially with the very low public image on MAGAV and the IP.

The problem first started in unit Gideonim in august 1998, when the new CO, a former decorated Unit YAMAS officer, arrived and unit Gideonim began performing SWAT assignments and criminal intelligence gathering missions. The unit’s members almost immediately went on mutiny.

In the Gideonim incident, as well as in the Unit YAMAM mutiny afterwards, Vileck shown a solid back-bone behavior, giving total support to the new CO and kicking out the leaders of the mutiny.

One year later, the same repeated itself in Unit YAMAM. In April 1999 the Unit received a new CO. Since one of the main reasons the unit was ruled out In the past from many major hostage rescue operations, was the bad public relations, Vileck maid a smart decision and appointed the former Sayeret Egoz CO and once a senior Sayeret MATKAL officer to be the new CO.

Soon after the appointing of the new CO, the unit became involved in SWAT type civilian missions, and a full scale mutiny broke. Again, like in the Gideonim case, there were two reasons for the mutiny - the appointing of a new CO who didn't grow within the unit, and the beginning of the unit's involvement in non-CT assignments.

In October 1999 the operators turned to the media and the all thing exploded. The trigger to the mutiny was that early the same year four of the unit's members, all from the same team, were involved in two problematic incidents, resulting in the new CO decision to kick all four operators from the unit. The first incident occurred during a criminal search warrant, in the Israeli-Arab village of Shvike, (within Israeli borders). the operators totally trashed the place, mainly because they were very pissed off that they are involved in this kind of task.

The second incident occurred during a routine physical training in the unit's gym, a kitten wondered into the gym. One of the operators, without thinking twice, simply pulled up a weight and crashed the kitten head. None of the other operators gave it any further though and continued their training as schedule.

When new CO found out about these two incidents he decided to kick all four operators out of the unit. The kicking of the four operators didn't go smoothly and it was just the excuse the unit's operators were looking for. Almost immediately 60 members of the unit signed a petition, saying that they don't the new CO has what it takes to be the unit's CO, that he treat them like IDF rookies, and that his entire command style is more fit to an IDF SF unit then to a civilian one. Further more, the operators even stated that they don't trust him in training, not to mention in real combat, and that if he wouldn't be replaced by another officer from within the unit they will all quit.

Like in the Unit Gideonim case, Vileck gave total and unconditioned backup to the new CO, and the four problematic operators were kicked out, along side with six leaders of the mutiny. Even the unit's second in command was 'transferred' to Unit YAMAS.