Bill creating new intelligence oversight body passes preliminary Knesset reading
Legislation aims to establish a devil’s advocate unit reporting to PM, in order to challenge consensus conclusions of other bodies and avoid October 7-style failures
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"

A bill to establish a new intelligence oversight body directly under the authority of the prime minister passed a preliminary reading Wednesday in the Knesset plenum, 56 to 36.
The bill seeks to create a so-called devil’s advocate unit to challenge the conclusions of intelligence bodies, in hopes of avoiding missteps caused by groupthink, seen as a key cause of the failures that enabled the Oct. 7 attack.
The legislation will now go to the Knesset House Committee, which will determine which committee will prepare it for the first of three further readings necessary for it to become law.
The unit, which would report directly to the prime minister, would have the authority to demand intelligence information from “any intelligence body… or any other state institution” in Israel. This would include military intelligence, the Shin Bet, Mossad and the National Security Council.
According to the legislation, the proposed unit would be tasked with synthesizing and analyzing this information and providing the prime minister, defense minister, and intelligence agencies with alternate takes on security challenges. It would also be required to report regularly to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
The unit would largely operate independently and would be prohibited from employing anybody who has served in an intelligence agency within the prior two years. Its director would be legally required to weigh in on any issue brought before the security cabinet for a decision.

The unit would be required to submit analyses to the heads of any relevant security bodies “regarding any plan or military operation” needing the security cabinet’s approval. Neither the security cabinet nor the leaders of security agencies would be allowed to make a decision without such input.
While a similar type of unit currently exists within the IDF itself, its influence is minimal, and it has failed to challenge existing modes of thought within the IDF, according to Likud MK Amit Halevi, the bill’s primary sponsor.
Speaking with The Times of Israel earlier this month, Halevi argued that the “fundamental” intelligence failure of October 7 came about because the IDF and other security agencies “are used to not challenging themselves with a different view.”
“The intelligence bodies have a few concepts, a few assumptions and nobody actually challenges them,” he said. “This team was not independent, so it couldn’t actually criticize its own commanders.”
Both the commander of Unit 8200, the IDF’s main signals intelligence unit, and the chief of the Israel Defense Forces’s Military Intelligence Directorate have stepped down over their roles in the failures that led to the Hamas terror group’s onslaught.

Other top defense officials have said they bear responsibility for the deadly invasion carried out by Hamas on October 7, including the head of the Shin Bet security agency and the IDF chief of staff.
“We all feel the loss, the feeling that we could have prevented it, and as the head of the agency, responsible for the agency’s activities, I feel it perhaps more than anyone,” Shin Bet head Ronen Bar said in May.
Bar is reportedly planning on stepping down after the war against Hamas ends, as is IDF chief Herzi Halevi.
Halevi’s bill is advancing through the Knesset at the same time as law enforcement is probing alleged “systematic” theft of classified intelligence documents from Israel Defense Forces databases and the transfer of those files to people in the Prime Minister’s Office, amid suspicions that they were utilized for political purposes.
Eli Feldstein, a former spokesman and aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and another suspect whose name has not been released for publication, are suspected of transferring classified information to harm the state, collecting classified material to harm the state, and conspiring to commit a crime, among other charges.

Asked earlier this month why a new independent intelligence body should be established given the ongoing leak investigation, Halevi downplayed the scandal and insisted that the entire matter revolved around “an officer [who] wanted to bring information to the prime minister.”
“And inside the IDF, they didn’t let him do it. So he tried to find channels and paths to the prime minister in order to give him this information. It’s unbelievable. It’s horrible. I mean, [as the prime minister] you need to make a decision, you’re responsible, but we won’t give you the information to make the right decisions,” he argued.
Religious Zionism MK Simcha Rothman is reportedly working on a bill that would shield officials of security and intelligence agencies who pass on information to the prime minister, cabinet officials or the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
If passed, the bill might provide legal protection to some of those involved in the Prime Minister’s Office leak case (though Feldstein is accused of leaking the documents to the media as well).