Police said looking to question Minister Chikli over Shin Bet classified intel leak
Sources say Diaspora Affairs minister received classified information from security official who exposed probe into alleged spread of Kahanist ideology in police force
The Department for Internal Police Investigations (DIPI) has requested permission to question Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli under caution over suspicions that he was passed classified information by a member of the Shin Bet domestic security agency, Hebrew media reported on Thursday.
The Shin Bet official, referred to only by his initial “Aleph,” was arrested in April on suspicion of sharing classified information with Chikli and two journalists, the Haaretz daily reported.
According to the report, investigators believe Chikli not only received the information but also gave guidance to Aleph about how it should be handled. Essentially, the report said, they view Chikli as the person who “ran” the Shin Bet agent.
As such, they believe he should be questioned in the case against Aleph, it said.
Chikli, on Thursday, wrote to Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, who must approve requests to investigate cabinet ministers, to tell her he had become aware of DIPI’s request on Wednesday when a journalist asked him for a response to the development.
In the letter, the minister alleged that Baharav-Miara has a multitude of conflicts of interest and therefore should not make the call on whether or not he should be questioned under caution.
Aleph, a 25-year veteran of the domestic security service, is suspected of exposing information about a probe into the alleged spread of Kahanism in the police force, which comes under the purview of far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. According to Aleph’s lawyers, the leaked information also relates to material from the Shin Bet’s October 7 probes that has not been made public.
Kahanism is the ideology espoused by extreme-right leader rabbi Meir Kahane, a former Knesset member who headed the banned ultranationalist group Kach before his death at the hands of an assassin in New York in 1990.
Ben Gvir’s ultranationalist Otzma Yehudit party is seen as a successor to the proscribed racist Kach party founded by Kahane, though Ben Gvir has claimed to have moderated his views.
The case has increased already boiling tensions between the Netanyahu government and the security and judicial systems, with outraged ministers claiming the probe as evidence of a “deep state” — including Baharav-Miara and Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar — working to oust the government.
Bar was fired by the government on March 21 despite the attorney general warning the government that it first needed to explain the substantive reasons behind its decision, and that it needed to consult a statutory advisory committee for removing him from office, both of which it failed to do.
The High Court froze the decision to fire Bar in order to hear petitions filed to the court asking it to annul his dismissal, on the grounds that the decision was made due to the political and personal expediencies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
But Bar announced last month he would resign as Shin Bet head by June 15, leading the government to annul its decision to fire him and to then request that the petitions be removed from the court’s docket.
Baharav-Miara said the High Court should nevertheless rule on the petitions to ensure that the next head of the security service can stand up to “illegitimate pressures.”
When the investigation against Aleph came to light last month, Chikli called him an “Israeli hero” for revealing “corruption” in the security service, alleging that he showed how Bar had carried out “obsessive spying on a serving minister” — apparently Ben Gvir.
In the Knesset summer session that opened Wednesday, Netanyahu’s governing coalition is advancing legislation that would give politicians tighter control over the bodies responsible for law enforcement and prosecution.
One measure would dilute the powers of the attorney general and create a new criminal prosecution service, putting the government in charge of who heads it, and another would place the DIPI directly under the authority of Justice Minister Yariv Levin.
The Times of Israel Community.