New Shin Bet chief said to appoint four women to top leadership roles

The new head of the Shin Bet has appointed four women to the security agency’s top leadership, according a Wednesday Channel 13 report.

For the first time, four women will serve as members of the security agency’s general staff. Two of the women will be promoted to roles equivalent to those of major generals in the military, according to the TV network. The roles include Shin Bet’s comptroller and the heads of the organization’s training branch, financial branch and investigative division.

Ronen Bar, who took office one week ago, previously served as the agency’s deputy director. He was approved for the top job despite an anonymous letter claiming unspecified misconduct. The committee which approved Bar’s nomination said it found no indication that the anonymous claims had any basis or merit.

The Shin Bet’s “multi-generational tapestry is a representative sample of Israeli society. But above all else, it is an organization of excellent people — purposeful, convinced of the righteousness of their ways and true friends,” Bar said in a speech at his swearing-in ceremony.

Bar served in the Israel Defense Forces’ elite Sayeret Matkal unit — the same detachment in which Prime Minister Naftali Bennett served — and then entered the ranks of the Shin Bet as a field agent. He was tapped to lead the Shin Bet’s Operations Division in 2011, became head of the service’s resource development department in 2016, and took over as deputy head of the organization in 2018.