Eisenkot spars with Netanyahu’s Likud, says he knew of PM’s alleged 2013 attempted wiretapping of top officials

National Unity MK Gadi Eisenkot says he knew about an alleged instruction given in 2013 by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the head of the Shin Bet security service to carry out illicit monitoring of senior officials to prevent media leaks.

“I knew they were asked to carry out surveillance, and I can say I was even consulted,” Eisenkot, who was Netanyahu’s military secretary at the time, tells the Kan public broadcaster. “I wasn’t a target because he trusted me, but I knew about the stories in real time.”

He says he was in charge of the monitoring actions carried out on behalf of Netanyahu’s office.

The remarks support an allegation made last week by former Shin Bet chief Yoram Cohen in a declaration to the High Court of Justice.

Cohen claimed that, in 2013, Netanyahu asked him to use intelligence tools to monitor anyone who was party to knowledge of an impending Israeli operation in a hostile country until the operation was completed. Cohen said he declined, telling Netanyahu it was inappropriate for the Shin Bet to use tools designed for spying missions and to prevent terror attacks against “hundreds” of members of Israel’s intelligence agencies, including their heads.

The Movement for Quality Government in Israel submitted that filing to the High Court as supporting evidence for its petition against Netanyahu and the government’s decision to fire current Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar.

Eisenkot also repeats his criticism of Netanyahu’s handling of the war, his government’s attacks on law enforcement officials leading probes into alleged wrongdoing in his office, and his advisers allegedly acting on behalf of Qatari interests, which is at the center of one of those probes.

Netanyahu’s Likud responds by accusing Eisenkot, who lost a son and a nephew during fighting in Gaza in the current war, of “striving for complete surrender to Hamas in Gaza and the entire Iranian axis.” It adds: “The public doesn’t buy [the center-left’s] defeatism, nor their fake political probes that they echo with cooperation by the media, and which fall apart time after time.”

National Unity responds to the response, accusing Netanyahu of giving in to his government’s far-right flank, fumbling opportunities to free the Gaza hostages, and only launching a ground offensive in Gaza under the centrist party’s pressure early in the war.

“It’s time for the prime minister who oversaw the biggest failure since the state’s founding to stop giving in to every political demand, and do what’s right for the State of Israel — return the hostages, thwart Iran’s nuclear capabilities, pass a [Haredi] enlistment outline, form a state commission of inquiry [into Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught], and go to elections.”