Shin Bet official detained for classified intel leak; coalition fumes over ‘deep state’ probe
‘Aleph’ suspected of leaking info on probe into Kahanism in police force under Ben Gvir; his lawyer says he shared Oct. 7-related material; PM shares post claiming Bar, Baharav-Miara turned agency into ‘militia’
A Shin Bet security agency official is under investigation for leaks of classified information to journalists and a government minister, it was revealed on Tuesday.
The material relates to an ongoing police and Shin Bet investigation into possible extremist far-right Kahanist ideology taking root among the police force. According to the suspect’s lawyers, material he conveyed that was not classified also relates to unpublicized parts of the Shin Bet’s investigation of failures surrounding Hamas’s October 7 assault.
The development further increased tensions between the political echelon and the country’s security and judicial system, already at boiling point with the government’s moves to fire Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara and Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar.
Rumors of the affair began to swirl on Monday, and Likud MKs Tally Gotliv and Avihai Boaron tweeted partial details of it, prompting the judge overseeing the case to partially lift a gag order on the investigation, which is being carried out by the Shin Bet internal security service and the Justice Ministry’s Department of Internal Police Investigations (DIPI).
The court kept in place a prohibition on the media reporting the name of the arrested Shin Bet official, who has been identified only by the Hebrew letter Aleph. But the initial ban on identifying the alleged recipients of the leaked information was lifted, and they were named as Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli, Channel 12 journalist Amit Segal, and Israel Hayom reporter Shirit Avitan Cohen.
Aleph was remanded into custody for a further day by Lod District Court on Tuesday afternoon. His attorney said his client believed it was in the public’s interest to know the information he is accused of leaking, and that the leak did not endanger Israel’s security.
The Shin Bet official, reportedly a 25-year veteran of the service, is reportedly suspected of passing the three information about a probe into growing “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.
Reports Tuesday night said he allegedly conveyed two documents and intended to pass on a third, and that he also intended to contact three more journalists.
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 far-right 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.
Outraged coalition members said the investigation was further proof that Shin Bet chief Bar must not remain in his post, with some ministers claiming it was more evidence of an alleged “deep state” — including Bar and Baharav-Miara — working to oust the government. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet voted last month to fire Bar and began the process of seeking to fire Baharav-Miara. The High Court of Justice has temporarily frozen Bar’s dismissal.
Netanyahu, Likud: Bar’s Shin Bet became deep state ‘private militia’
In a statement posted to X, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party said that under Bar and Baharav-Miara, the Shin Bet “arrests and interrogates journalists, blackmails a police officer with threats, and launches futile political investigations against ministers and Knesset members from the coalition — all intending to prevent Bar’s dismissal.”
Bar and Baharav-Miara have turned parts of the security service into a “private militia of the deep state that undermines the rule of law and the foundations of democracy,” the premier’s party charged.
“The political investigations must end immediately,” the Likud statement said, demanding that Bar leave his post and saying that Shin Bet members who do their job “deserve” a different boss.
While there was no direct comment from the prime minister on the matter, Netanyahu shared the Likud statement on his personal X account.
Shin Bet: Obligatory probe of alleged illegal leaks endangering security
The Shin Bet said in a statement that the suspect was arrested last Wednesday on suspicion of committing “security” offenses by providing information to unauthorized parties.
It said the staffer is “suspected of abusing his security role and his direct access to the Shin Bet’s information systems in order to take classified material and transfer it to unauthorized people, several times and in a suspicious manner… in a way that endangers security” and “in violation of the law.”
“This is a grave and unusual matter, in which the scale of the material that was taken and transferred to unauthorized people was not clear from the start. It was accordingly necessary to stop the leak of the information,” the security agency added.
The Shin Bet also said no journalist had been questioned or asked to give testimony over the affair, and that “no journalists’ phones have been bugged.”
The DIPI said in a statement that the suspect was being investigated for the removal of information from the Shin Bet’s systems and transferring it to unauthorized parties. The police body also noted that it has not collected testimonies from journalists as part of the investigation.
Segal first reported on the probe into extremism in the police force last month.
Unsourced Hebrew-language media reports said that during questioning, the suspect said he acted to publicize information “of the highest importance to the public” that he alleged was being concealed by the Shin Bet.
He said the information he passed on to Chikli and Segal was about the probe of extremism in police, which, he claimed, was intended as a move to investigate political leaders, the Kan public broadcaster reported.
The suspect’s defense team said in a (Hebrew) statement that the information passed to Avitan Cohen was not classified and included details regarding the Shin Bet probe of October 7 that were not made public.
Contrary to the Shin Bet’s published summary, which “pointed mainly to the political echelon on certain issues, [the information conveyed by its client] presented a more complex picture regarding the Shin Bet’s conduct and position on the eve of October 7th,” the suspect’s lawyers said.
Coalition outrage
Chikli called the arrested Shin Bet official an “Israeli hero” for revealing “corruption” in the security service.
Chikli, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, said the detained official revealed information showing Bar carried out “obsessive spying on a serving minister” — apparently Ben Gvir. He also said that the security service’s investigation into the beginning of the war with Hamas portrayed “a false and distorted picture.”
“Bar wanted to tell us that the political echelon was responsible for strengthening Hamas but forgot to say that he himself had made the reconstruction of Gaza and strengthening its economy a central goal,” Chikli wrote in a post to X, referring to the internal Shin Bet probe of failures leading to the devastating Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which terrorists killed some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages.
Chikli vowed to fight on behalf of the official, and said he was fighting for Israel against “a political Stasi” attached to Bar and Baharav-Miara.
The minister asserted that the information leaked by the official did not harm the state’s security; rather, “not revealing the materials to the political echelon and the public is what harms the security of the country.”
Chikli additionally blasted Bar and Baharav-Miara, comparing them to France’s 17th-18th century king Louis XIV, who declared, “I am the state.”
“Bar doesn’t see himself as subject to the government, which means that he doesn’t see himself as subject to the laws of the country that sharply and clearly define his subordination to the government and its head,” Chikli said.
Journalist’s accusations
Channel 12 journalist Segal said on X that his report last month on the Shin Bet’s covert investigation into the Israel Police embarrassed Bar and Baharav-Miara, leading them to pursue his source.
After their probes into the police didn’t reveal anything, they decided to use the tools at their disposal “to hunt the person who exposed them, and so they threw him into custody without a lawyer,” Segal wrote on X, referring to the circumstances under which the arrested Shin Bet official was initially denied access to his lawyer.
Segal challenged the allegation that the suspect had obstructed an investigation.
“How is it possible to obstruct an investigation that ended with nothing? Did it reveal Shin Bet sources? When there are no sources, it is difficult to locate them,” Segal wrote.
“In a climate where appearances and press freedom are cared about even minimally, one does not hunt sources for personal reasons,” he wrote.
“[Is this] harm to state security or a PR campaign by the head of the agency who is sending his workers to the dungeons?” asked Avitan Cohen on X.
Ben Gvir also lashed out at top law enforcement officials, calling Bar, Baharav-Miara, and Department of Internal Police Investigations head Keren Ben Menachem “three people of the deep state that are crossing every line.”
Meeting canceled
Fellow far-right coalition member Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich commented, “This is what a real coup looks like.”
“When a secret intelligence organization uses the draconian powers granted to it specifically for security purposes against elected officials and journalists, while completely losing its brakes and controls. When an elected government seeks to remove from office a failed Shin Bet chief who has betrayed and undermined it, and the attorney general and the court violently prevent this,” he wrote on X.
Smotrich said that Israel is on a “slippery and dangerous slope,” charging that the actions of law enforcement agencies threaten democracy.
He added that the Shin Bet official under investigation of leaking should be the next head of the security service.
Smotrich notified Netanyahu on Monday he would not participate in a scheduled security discussion if Bar was invited, a statement from his office said, adding that Bar was a “dangerous man” who uses Shin Bet tools for “personal needs” and to “take revenge on politicians and journalists.”
The meeting was later canceled.
Opposition: Deflecting attention from Qatargate
Opposition Leader MK Yair Lapid charged that the outcry was intended to deflect attention from the so-called Qatargate affair in which senior aides to Netanyahu are suspected of having illicit ties to Doha.
In a post to X, Lapid accused the “government of criminals” of attacking investigators of security leaks in order to “divert attention from the Qatargate affair.”
Opposition National Unity party leader MK Benny Gantz said that regardless of the identity of the source of the leak source or its recipients, “the leaking of confidential security information to unauthorized entities must be checked.”
Gantz also slammed the criticism of the Shin Bet, writing it is “unbelievable” that the Likud party was “acting to harm one of the most important organizations for our security, at a time of war.”
Netanyahu moved to fire Bar last month, but the High Court of Justice issued an interim injunction freezing the dismissal until further notice and giving the government and the attorney general until April 20 to reach a compromise over the bitter legal dispute regarding the government’s authority to make the move.
Critics charge that Netanyahu had a clear conflict of interest in removing Bar from office given the Shin Bet’s ongoing investigation into Qatargate, and more broadly accuse the premier of seeking to pin all the blame for October 7 on Bar and the security establishment, while shirking responsibility himself.
Lazar Berman contributed to this report.
