The Israel Police, which never had a good public relations image and was never very popular among the public, has undergone a rare and unprecedented process of public disintegration. In the last year and a half, seven out of 16 major generals who comprise the high-ranking police command were forced to resign. (A police major general is the equivalent rank of general in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) or in other Western armies.) Four out of seven resigned or were discharged due to suspicions of various forms of sexual harassment against subordinate female police officers.

To this list we must add another major general, Southern District Police commander Uri Bar-Lev, who was slated to be promoted to inspector general in 2011, but whose promotion was canceled at the last minute while he was under investigation for sexual misconduct. Bar-Lev ultimately was forced to resign; the charge was replaced by “unbecoming conduct.”

Such a thing had never happened before in Israel and it is doubtful that similar phenomena took place elsewhere in the Western world in the modern era. It is hard to conceive of a reality in which almost half of the General Staff of the US Army or half of the senior command of the New York Police Department would be caught for such conduct and expelled in such a short time. As of February 2015, the police top brass in Israel does not exist, does not function and the Israeli public’s view of the police has hit an all-time low. This week, when the “seventh major general” affair exploded on Feb. 4, the issue grabbed the headlines and took over the public agenda. It even put the elections and the tension in Israel’s north on the back burner. A country without a police force.

The seventh major general is under investigation. This afternoon, Feb. 5, his name was released: Maj. Gen. Hagai Dotan, commander of the Coastal District, one of the most highly-esteemed, veteran members of the organization. He has not yet resigned or been dismissed, but the assessment is that it will happen soon.