Hitting back at Netanyahu, Shin Bet chief defends intel theft probe that led into PMO
In scathing letter that does not name PM, Ronen Bar denounces ‘conspiracies’ aimed to weaken agency, denies probe targeted PMO, says claim that suspects treated like terrorists ‘borders on incitement’
Ronen Bar, the head of the Shin Bet, has reportedly written a furious letter defending the security agency’s investigation of the scandal regarding the theft and leaking of classified IDF intelligence material, accusing his critics of peddling conspiracies and seeking to weaken the agency at a time of war.
The letter, which was quoted extensively by Channel 12 news on Sunday, was reportedly written in response to complaints made by rabbis from the religious Zionist community about the treatment of the suspects in the case and the probe itself.
Bar responded by countering a series of bitter allegations, many of which were made publicly eight days ago by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding the handling of the case, and echoed some of the language used by the prime minister, but he did not mention Netanyahu by name.
Netanyahu has been widely reported to be contemplating dismissing Bar, as well as the current IDF chief of staff, Herzi Halevi, and Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, though he has not publicly acknowledged that.
The Shin Bet probe led to the November 21 indictments on grave national security charges of Eli Feldstein, an aide to Netanyahu, and an unnamed IDF reserves officer. Another, more senior Netanyahu aide, Jonatan Urich, has reportedly twice been questioned under caution in the case, and a former aide, Yisrael Einhorn, is reportedly wanted for questioning but is overseas.
On November 23, Netanyahu issued a lengthy video, in which he denounced the investigation as a “witch hunt” against him and his aides, accused investigators of treating the suspects “like the worst terrorists, handcuffed for days,” claimed that there was selective investigation of alleged leaks, and asserted that vital intelligence material was deliberately being kept from him.
Netanyahu is not a suspect in the case.
In his letter to the rabbis, as quoted by Channel 12, Bar noted that the Shin Bet has looked into 19 cases of leaked material relating to the IDF, Shin Bet, and Mossad since the Hamas invasion and slaughter on October 7, 2023. He made clear that the probe of the leaked material that led to Feldstein “began inside the IDF” — debunking the notion that the Prime Minister’s Office had been premeditatedly targeted by the investigators in some way. “It only reached where it reached as it developed,” he wrote of the probe.
Some of those 19 probes are completed; “some ended with indictments and sanctions,” he wrote.
Bar stressed that the Shin Bet investigates its own people using the same methods it uses when investigating other hierarchies, “without torturing those who are investigated” and operating “under external and judicial supervision.” Netanyahu and other critics have accused the Shin Bet of holding Feldstein and others in inhumane conditions.
Implicitly criticizing Netanyahu for not definitively acknowledging personal responsibility for the failures surrounding October 7, and for refusing to establish a state commission of inquiry into the disaster, Bar reportedly went on: “As far as I know, members of the defense establishment, myself included, were the first (and to date almost the only) people to admit to their responsibility [for October 7].
“The first to call for the opening of a state commission of inquiry that would put an end to the conspiracies, that would give a little comfort to those who lost those most dear to them, and that would lead to the necessary correction — was the Shin Bet, immediately after the war erupted.”
In a further implied response to criticisms of the probe by Netanyahu and some of his supporters, Bar continued: “To my sorrow, people with particular interests, commentators and others, are choosing to skew realities, if not to manufacture conspiracies, to fire arrows, to weaken and delegitimize the organizations that are fighting to defend the [national] home. The Shin Bet, out of a statesmanlike restraint, chooses to remain silent. So it is important that opinion leaders from across the spectrum, who are trusted and followed by the many and the good, make sure their words are well-founded.”
Bar directly responded to the prime minister’s castigation of the treatment of the suspects — echoing Netanyahu’s own language, again without naming him — by stating that the accusation of mistreatment of suspects, “that they are humiliated and handcuffed as though were terrorists, borders on incitement. It is apparently intended to weaken the organization. Even at a time of war.”
The Shin Bet, Bar vowed, “will continue with its work in accordance with the law.”
Responding to the allegation of selective investigations, Bar further wrote: “The Shin Bet was not called in to investigate the theft of documents and the leaking of information from them because of what was written in them, but in order to protect the process by which the [classified intelligence] was obtained.”
The damage caused by the incident was immeasurable, he wrote, “in lives, in the wellbeing of the hostages, in achieving the aims of the war and protecting the soldiers.”
Furthermore, he added, “The probe has shown that if we had not intervened, the damage would have been even greater.”
Condemning the investigation as though it was skewed from the start because of where its conclusions led it, Bar wrote, “defies common sense and besmirches the entire ranks of investigators, whose work has thwarted thousands of terror attacks and espionage activities.”
Feldstein, the Netanyahu aide, was charged with transferring classified information with the intent to harm the state — a charge that can carry a sentence of life in prison — as well as illicit possession of classified information and obstruction of justice.
He is accused of leaking to Germany’s Bild a document stolen from an IDF database by the other defendant, the IDF noncommissioned officer (NCO), in a bid to sway public opinion against a truce-hostage deal in Gaza. Feldstein allegedly received the document in June, and leaked it after six hostages were murdered by their Hamas captors at the end of August, when public criticism of Netanyahu’s handling of negotiations on a hostage deal spiked.
The Bild report on the leaked document highlighted Hamas’s ostensible strategy regarding the hostages, and Netanyahu cited it after its publication as reinforcement of his refusal to sanction a deal to end the war in return for the release of the hostages.
The unidentified NCO was charged with transferring classified information, an offense that is punishable by seven years in prison, as well as theft by an authorized person and obstruction of justice.
Feldstein and the unidentified NCO have been held in custody for four weeks, part of the time without access to legal counsel. Last week, a judge extended their detention until further notice as they await trial.
