Police arrested three men from central Israel on Friday after confiscating 3.5 tons of marijuana in a raid on a farm that was hidden by walls.

Police said the farm was located in the Sharon region, which covers the area north of Tel Aviv and includes Netanyahu and neighboring communities, but the exact location was not disclosed.

Police seized 1,200 marijuana plants, worth millions of shekels.

A farmer in the (legal) Tikkun Olan Cannabis farm near Tzfat. This is one of their greenhouses.

The company is licensed by Israel’s Ministry of Health to grow, process and distribute the medicinal plant.

It’s going to be another long, hot summer for security personnel if the latest statistics are accurate.

Israel Police report they received more than nine million ‘100′ calls (Israel’s ‘911′) from Tel Aviv in 2013 — a nine percent rise over the previous year.

Annual police data showed the heaviest rate of calls came in the summer months, in June, July and August.

Of the 9,208,890 calls received by the national Israel Police dispatcher, 40,868 took place at one o’clock in the morning, an hour when many bars close. Only 3,731 crimes were reported between 5 am and 6 am – in that grey hour before dawn.

In 2012, 359,503 complaints went on to be processed by police and nearly one third of those — 89,580 — were for disturbing the peace.

Figures show that 40 percent of the calls originated from the southern and central regional districts. But 18 percent came solely from the city of Tel Aviv; not far behind, 14 percent originated in Jerusalem.

Car theft accounted for 55 percent of nearly 20,000 calls to police.

In addition, police reported that some 2,553 kilograms of hashish were seized during the year as well as 1,171 kilos of marijuana and 47,316 tablets of methamphetamine.

In 2012, there were 19, 352 arrests for drug use, 4,448 arrests for drug trafficking and 2,972 arrests for possession of drugs “not for personal use.”

By the time they end up at Baba’s Grillroom in central Amsterdam, Israeli tourists tend to be somewhat distracted.

Situated near the famous Rembrandt Square, this popular and veteran falafel eatery is literally surrounded by pot-selling coffee shops that help make Amsterdam one of the top holiday destinations for Israelis — and especially for the young craving a cheap and top-quality high.

Giggly and thoroughly “mastoolim,” Hebrew slang for baked or stoned, they are likely to experience another dope-related phenomenon: The munchies. And that’s a problem for observant Jews in a city that is not exactly famous for its selection of kosher foods.

How fortunate, then, to chance upon the entrance to Baba’s place, with its promising signs in Hebrew and stars of David. Those sober enough to remain skeptical despite the Jewish symbolism are welcome to see Baba’s kosher certificate — a document signed by three rabbis from the United States.

The only problem is that one of the rabbis is deceased and the other two say they never certified any business in Amsterdam, according to a Jan. 9 report by the NIW Dutch Jewish weekly.

Acting on a tip, the paper sent one of its reporters, Jigal Krant, on an undercover mission that involved dressing up like an Israeli tourist and asking (in English) about the kashrut at Baba’s. Staff showed Krant a certificate signed by three rabbis. But the two living rabbis told NIW they had no idea their name was being used by Baba’s.

When NIW confronted the owners — two Egyptian Christians named Hanna Basta Tawadrous, 48, and Nermin Angali, 34 — they denied ever claiming they had a certificate, which NIW had photographed. Apparently, the new owners bought Baba’s approximately a year ago. To NIW they explained that their meat is kosher because it’s halal. (The NIW report did not investigate whether the meat is, in fact, halal.)

This article was written for JTA by Cnaan Liphshiz.

Israeli police exposed a drug lab in the Palestinian Authority city of Tulkarm, located on the western edge of Samaria and less than 15 miles from Netanya. A police spokesperson explained that Tulkarm was chosen as a site for the drug lab because it is not easily accessible to the Israeli Police

A large force of police and IDF soldiers surrounded and then entered a house, where they discovered a large marijuana factory and more than 120 plants. The drugs were to be distributed in the coastal Sharon area,. Over 120 plants were found. The lab was run by Arab residents of Taybe, located in the Arab-dominated area between Netanya, Umm el-Fahm east of Hadera and Kfar Saba.

The lab was exposed after the police had over the past several months arrested several drug dealers involved in the distribution of drugs which originated in this lab.

On the bustling bourgeois avenue of Tel Aviv’s Ibn Givrol Street, beneath a portico and next to a high-end hair salon, it smells like college.

Aside from a small green sign, the clinic is unidentifiable, its one window blocked with a sheet and covered with chains. A single metal door is guarded by a man with a large knit kippa, fringes from his tzitzis and a holster hanging below his belt.

Behind the door is the main distribution center of Tikun Olam, Israel’s principal supplier of medical cannabis. Some 11,000 Israelis take the drug legally to treat ailments ranging from cancer to post-traumatic stress disorder. But activists say the approval process for marijuana prescriptions is cumbersome, requiring patients to appear before a committee on cannabis use to determine their eligibility.

“We believe that you need to expand access to it,” said Ma’ayan Weisberg, Tikun Olam’s public relations director. “The government is taking a long time. Not everyone who needs it gets it.”

Leading the charge to change is an unlikely figure, the Likud party’s Moshe Feiglin, a resident of the Ginot Shomron community in Samaria and best known for his solid advocacy of a Jewish presence in all of Judea and Samaria.

His political views kept him of the Likud’s list of Knesset candidates for years and also caused Britain to ban him from entering.

Feiglin finally won a a relatively top spot on the Likud list and was elected to the Knesset in this year’s elections and promptly proposed to broaden access to medical marijuana by allowing any family physician to prescribe it. Eventually he hopes to push for full legalization.

“I support freedom, especially when we’re talking about something less dangerous than cigarettes or alcohol,” Feiglin told JTA. “People can be healed, and [current laws] are denying that.”

He considers himself a libertarian, albeit one with a religious bent. His opposition to a plan to issue biometric identification cards to Israelis and his longtime support for unfettered Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria  are, Feiglin says, of the same cloth as his support for marijuana use.

“The root of freedom is the belief in one God,” he said. “We worship him and therefore we can’t be enslaved to anyone else. An eternal nation doesn’t work against natural history, and our return to our land, to national sovereignty, means we’re connected forever.”

Feiglin’s push for legalization has landed him with some strange bedfellows. He considers Tamar Zandberg, another first-time lawmaker from the far-left Meretz party, one of his strongest allies on the issue. Labor Party Chairwoman Shelly Yachimovich also supports loosening restrictions on medical cannabis, though she opposes outright legalization.

“Feiglin and I don’t agree on almost anything,” Zandberg told JTA. “But on this we have a shared goal.”

Feiglin’s support for liberalizing the marijuana laws in Israel derives, in part, from personal considerations. His wife suffers from Parkinson’s disease and uses cannabis to alleviate her symptoms.

Not everyone who supports increased marijuana access backs full legalization. Hebrew University professor Raphael Mechoulam, a leading cannabis researcher, believes the drug should be decriminalized to prevent excessive arrests, but draws a line at full legalization.

“I wouldn’t want to be in a taxi or a plane where the driver is high,” Mechoulam said. “There’s a certain limit. You need the backing of the people. I’m not sure the people in Israel are ready and in favor of legalization.”

Feiglin also harbors reservations about full legalization, noting that he doesn’t want to turn Tel Aviv into Amsterdam on the Mediterranean.

“I don’t see Amsterdam as a bad thing,” he adds quickly. “There’s no chaos, there’s more freedom for citizens. [Legalization] didn’t upend the way of life.”

And though cannabis is consumed in his house due to his wife’s illness, Feiglin says that at least for now, he chooses not to inhale.

“I don’t take aspirin,” he said. “I don’t like putting things in my body. I like leaving the vessel of God as it is. But I would be happy to know that I could use it if I wanted to.”

This article was written by Ben Sales for JTA