State prosecution said mulling charges against Likud MK for outing Shin Bet agent
Tally Gotliv vows she won’t show up for preliminary hearing, claiming parliamentary immunity from prosecution
The state prosecution is considering summoning MK Tally Gotliv for a hearing before filing charges against her for revealing the identity of a Shin Bet security service agent, Hebrew media reported.
Gotliv, a firebrand member of the ruling Likud party, vowed she will not turn up if summoned, maintaining her claim that she has parliamentary immunity from prosecution.
The Haaretz daily first reported Saturday that the prosecution was mulling a hearing for Gotliv, and Channel 12 said Sunday that a summons was expected to be issued in the coming days.
She is suspected of violating the Shin Bet Law, which prohibits making public identifying details about the agency’s members.
“There is no chance I will go to a hearing,” Gotliv posted to X on Saturday, addressing the state prosecution and Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara. “I will not participate in your circus of persecuting right-wing people out of malicious and political considerations.”
Gotliv has in the past refused to obey police summonses for questioning, after she revealed over a year ago that an anti-government protest leader’s partner was a member of the Shin Bet security service.
In January 2024, she outed the partner of Shikma Bressler, who in 2023 was a leader of protests against the government’s contentious judicial overhaul plan.
Opposition to the overhaul effort drew hundreds of thousands to the streets and included calls by some IDF reservists not to volunteer for duty. The overhaul was temporarily shelved when the Hamas terror group attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, starting the ongoing war, but elements of it have since been revived.
Gotliv repeatedly circulated unfounded claims that linked Bressler and her partner to Hamas and its October 7 onslaught, including a conspiracy theory that US intelligence agencies had intercepted a conversation between Bressler’s partner and then-Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.
The claims led Bressler to sue Gotliv for defamation, seeking NIS 2.6 million ($715,000) in damages.
Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar at the time advised Baharav-Miara to open an investigation into Gotliv over her posts identifying Bressler’s partner.
“The identities of past or present security service workers are confidential, and their publication is forbidden,” Bar wrote at the time, in a letter to the attorney general citing the Shin Bet Law.
In December last year, Gotliv refused to present herself to police for questioning. A month later, Deputy State Attorney Alon Altman sent Gotliv a letter advising her that she does not have immunity from interrogation, Ynet reported.
In November, after Baharav-Miara approved the investigation into Gotliv, the Likud MK introduced a bill in the Knesset to ban any criminal investigation into a lawmaker unless it was approved by a Knesset supermajority of 90 out of 120 MKs.
Knesset legal adviser Sagit Afik said that Gotliv must publicly affirm in the Knesset plenum that the bill will not retroactively apply to civil litigation in which she is engaged, in order to prevent the appearance of a conflict of interest.
The Times of Israel Community.