Shin Bet probing Kahanist infiltration into police ranks

The Shin Bet has been conducting a covert probe into the possible infiltration of Kahanist elements into the police since September 2024, Channel 12 news reports.

The Shin Bet confirms it is examining these concerns.

The report presents a typed note from recently fired Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar in which he says that the agency has “marked the infiltration of Kahanism into the law enforcement agencies as a dangerous phenomenon whose prevention is part of the Shin Bet’s mission.”

Bar was referring to a 2002 law that states that one of the Shin Bet’s tasks is to protect the democratic regime and its institutions.

Bar in his note says that due to the “involvement of political ranks,” stopping such infiltration must be done “wisely and carefully,” likely in reference to National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, whose ministry has authority over the police.

Ben Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party is seen as a successor to the banned, racist Kach party founded by the slain far-right leader Rabbi Meir Kahane.

Bar gave instructions to collect evidence and testimony of the involvement of political elements in law enforcement work specifically for “unlawfully exerting force.”

Channel 12 reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was informed of the probe.

One of Ben Gvir’s senior advisers is Rabbi Bentzi Gopstein, a far-right disciple of Kahane and founder of the anti-miscegenetic Lehava organization, who has been convicted of incitement to racism.

Another of Ben Gvir’s senior advisers is Chanamel Dorfman, a far-right activist who has been previously investigated by the Shin Bet and who has served as the minister’s chief of staff. Dorfman is Gopstein’s son-in-law.

Dorfman was recently questioned by the Department of Internal Police Investigations as part of a probe into a senior West Bank police commander suspected of deliberately ignoring settler violence against Palestinians to please Ben Gvir and earn a possible promotion.

The Shin Bet notes in response to the report that its mission includes dealing with the Kach and Kahane Hai groups, which were outlawed in 1994 and declared to be terrorist organizations in 2016, but which nonetheless continued to be active even following those dates.

It says the agency worked to “uncover” and “thwart” the groups’ activities, “in accordance with its mission under the law.”

“As a result, and as information on the subject is received, the service deals with concerns about the infiltration of these elements into government institutions, and in particular into law enforcement institutions,” it says.

Ben Gvir’s office describes the revelation as “an earthquake,” and says it demonstrates why Bar cannot remain as head of the Shin Bet.

“The head of a clandestine organization that initiates investigations and collects materials against elected officials, defining in advance the goal ‘to collect evidence and testimony of the involvement of the political echelon’ is an immediate danger to democracy, who must immediately flee from any position,” says the statement.