Boaz Balt apologizes to prosecutors, leaving old allegations unexplained

Balt, head of the Israel Police’s Investigations and Intelligence Division, apologized to senior prosecutors on Thursday, November 12, 2026, four days after recordings of his criticism became public. He now describes the State Attorney’s Office as a trusted professional partner and says taking responsibility for his division changed his understanding of its work. In the published passages, however, he offers no case-by-case explanation of his earlier accusations.⁠15⁠1

The distinction matters because those accusations concerned more than friction between institutions. Balt alleged that prosecutors kept criminal files in reserve as leverage against citizens, and that similar pressure could be applied to police officers through misconduct investigations. The reporting establishes that he made those allegations. It does not establish that the alleged abuses occurred.⁠1⁠5

Balt said the recorded remarks were made about two years earlier, before he entered his current post, when he held the lower police rank of tat-nitzav. That is his approximate account of their age; the material available does not independently establish the recording date. His explanation is that his vantage point changed, not that the remarks were recent or represented his present assessment.⁠1⁠15

“I admit that things were not sufficiently clear to me then as they are clear to me today,” he said, in English translation of the Hebrew remarks reproduced by Arutz Sheva and Kipa. He also borrowed a line about seeing things differently from a new position. The substance of his clarification was an acknowledgment of changed understanding.⁠1⁠15

That translated description reverses the thrust of his older criticism. Balt spoke of trust, respect and a shared professional path, adding that since becoming division head he had seen prosecutors concerned only with the public interest. These are his current assessments of the institution, not an independent examination of its decisions.⁠1

Nor did he claim that investigators and prosecutors always agree. He acknowledged disagreements, sometimes difficult ones, but described them as serving a worthy purpose: uncovering the truth and serving the public. Professional disagreement can coexist with cooperation. The harder question is whether his earlier claims described ordinary disagreements badly, or alleged specific conduct that still requires an explanation. The published clarification does not resolve that distinction.⁠1⁠15

The recordings were disclosed by News 12 on Sunday, November 8; JDN identified journalist Amit Segal as responsible for the disclosure. In excerpts reproduced by JDN and Arutz Sheva, Balt alleged that prosecutors left files untouched for a year and then brought them out for supplementary investigation, using the unresolved cases to exert pressure. No individual case history in the reviewed material establishes that allegation.⁠5⁠1

He extended the accusation to the Police Internal Investigations Department, known by its Hebrew acronym, Mahash, which investigates police misconduct. Balt alleged that the power to summon officers for questioning could itself become leverage. That is a serious claim about the use of investigative authority, but it remains an allegation—not a finding against the department or proof that any particular officer was improperly targeted.⁠1⁠5

His criticism also reached prosecutorial priorities and police conduct. He accused prosecutors of concentrating on public corruption while neglecting other matters, including crime in Arab society. And he accused some officers of avoiding confrontations with criminals, describing them as looking away from incidents out of fear.⁠5

Using Abu Latif as an example, Balt claimed that police checks once conducted 20 times a year had fallen to fewer than one a year. Those figures were his comparison in the older recording. They are not verified police statistics, a current measure of enforcement or evidence that a particular officer neglected a duty. The later endorsement of prosecutors does not substantively address these separate assertions about policing.⁠5

JDN reported on November 8 that unnamed prosecutorial officials rejected the accusations. They said decisions to investigate or prosecute rested on professional considerations and evidence, without extraneous motives. That denial belongs alongside Balt’s allegations, but neither it nor his subsequent change of position amounts to an adjudication of the underlying claims.⁠5

Balt’s first response was narrower than the November 12 clarification. A statement issued on his behalf said his remarks had been taken out of context and defended substantive criticism between organizations as legitimate and constructive. It also stressed close cooperation among police, prosecutors and government legal advisers. His later acknowledgment that his understanding had changed went further than that initial defense.⁠5⁠15

Alongside the apology, Balt alleged that releasing the recordings at this moment was intended to harm him and divert him from his work. The published passages provide no evidence proving that motive. His account of when he spoke and his allegation about why someone released the recordings are separate propositions; the approximate age of a recording does not establish the purpose of its disclosure.⁠1⁠15

The available accounts reproduce substantial passages of the clarification and recordings, but the complete original audio and a standalone official text of his statement were not available for review. The passages support reporting an apology and a changed assessment. They do not support saying that Balt explicitly withdrew every factual allegation or admitted that each was false.

For anyone facing an open criminal file—or an officer summoned in a misconduct inquiry—the practical issue is not whether police and prosecutors now describe their relationship warmly. It is whether an investigation was prolonged or used improperly. Resolving that would require evidence about particular files, decisions and reasons. Balt has changed his public position; the published apology has not supplied that evidence.