This is not a drill: Ronen Bar’s affidavit is a thunderous alarm call for Israel
Shin Bet chief officially tells Supreme Court Netanyahu demanded loyalty to him personally rather than to state and its laws; justices’ response will shape the future of Israeli democracy and security
Yuval Yoaz is the legal analyst at Zman Israel, The Times of Israel's sister Hebrew website. He practices law, specializing in public, constitutional and media laws, and is the founder of Israel Democracy Guard. He is a partner in the law office of Karniel & Co Yoaz-Bareket-Jonas.
The affidavit submitted by Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar to the High Court of Justice on Monday is a thunderous alarm call for the Israeli public.
The head of one of the country’s central security agencies officially and explicitly informed the court that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded personal loyalty from him – to obey the prime minister, that is, rather than the law or the courts – and that Netanyahu systematically sought to harness the Shin Bet’s far-reaching capabilities for his personal and political benefit.
The red lights are not just flashing – they’re blinding.
Just minutes before noon – the deadline set by the High Court for Bar to submit his affidavit – two documents landed on the judges’ desk. Only one of them is available to the public. Bar’s public affidavit runs eight dense, concise pages and expands on the content of the letter he sent to the justices on April 4. His classified affidavit spans 31 pages and includes five appendices.
Due to the court’s decision, the public will not have access to the full and detailed affidavit. However, the document was also given to the prime minister and his aides – making a potential leak not inconceivable. Additionally, the judges may choose to include a paraphrase of its contents in their ruling on the issue of his dismissal, which was unanimously ordered by the cabinet at Netanyahu’s instigation last month, prompting the petitions the court is now considering.
It is also reasonable to expect that echoes of the full affidavit’s content will be included in Netanyahu’s own response to the court, which he is due to submit on Thursday — unless he backs out at the last moment.
Following Bar’s submission, Netanyahu’s office was quick to issue a statement declaring: “Ronen Bar submitted a false affidavit to the Supreme Court, which will be disproved in detail soon.” However, the statement did not commit to presenting that refutation within Netanyahu’s own affidavit.
Leaving aside Bar’s classified 31-page document, his public affidavit alone is enough to leave readers stunned.
Many of the allegations he makes against Netanyahu have been raised in public discourse over recent years, but this is an entirely different situation. The accusations are now being made explicitly and openly by the Shin Bet chief himself, and are presented in a signed affidavit to the court – carrying the weight of sworn testimony.
Every key accusation included by Bar is a bombshell that ought to shake the foundations of Israeli public life:
- Netanyahu made clear to Bar that, in the event of a constitutional crisis, he expects the Shin Bet chief to obey the prime minister, not the High Court. If Netanyahu indeed made such a demand, the very act of making it constitutes a serious criminal offense that warrants investigation.
- Netanyahu repeatedly pressured Bar to issue a security decree that would effectively prevent the prime minister from testifying in his ongoing criminal trial. A draft of such an opinion, prepared by someone within Netanyahu’s circle, was passed to Bar for signature – but he refused.
- Netanyahu asked Bar to deploy the Shin Bet’s surveillance tools against Israeli citizens – specifically, the leaders of the 2023 protest movement against the government’s judicial overhaul – citing alleged “subversion.” In so doing, he disregarded the Shin Bet’s own criteria for deploying its powers in such cases, including the balance between preventing subversion and upholding the rights to protest and free expression, as well as the principle of keeping the Shin Bet out of the political arena.
- Netanyahu delivered these requests orally, at the end of work meetings, after sending out his military secretary and the stenographer operating the recording device – in an apparent effort to avoid documentation.
- Bar sent a letter to Netanyahu and Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs, in which he detailed the national security importance of establishing a state commission of inquiry into the events surrounding Hamas’s October 7 invasion and massacre – not only because it would be the right thing to do from a governance standpoint, but because the security establishment requires such a process to draw conclusions and implement structural reforms in doctrine and operations. Netanyahu continues insistently to resist such a probe.
The cumulative conclusion arising from Bar’s affidavit is that the core issue at stake is not merely whether his dismissal from the position of Shin Bet chief was based on professional grounds or on improper considerations. The answer to that seems abundantly clear.
The focus now shifts to the risk posed by the fact that Israel is currently governed by a man against whom – at the very least – direct accusations are being made by a named and official source, alleging that he is working to undermine the democratic character of the state.
Bar’s affidavit carries two central implications.
The first is evidentiary: the very fact that Bar raised these allegations in an affidavit gives them the legal weight of courtroom testimony.
While the High Court’s procedural rules technically allow for the cross-examination of those who submit affidavits, this provision has long been regarded as a dead letter and has not been in use since the 1990s. The High Court typically treats the contents of affidavits as factual and reliable. Still, the option exists – and the justices could permit cross-examinations in this case, in order to establish the factual disputes between Netanyahu and Bar.
The second implication relates to the documents attached by Bar to his full, classified affidavit. These attachments are meant to serve as objective evidence supporting Bar’s claims. The fact that Bar chose to include them only in the classified version and withhold them from the public suggests they likely include minutes and summaries of meetings, decisions, or other internal documents whose credibility would be difficult to challenge.
This means that Netanyahu – if he chooses to back his version with documentation, rather than mere argument – faces a significant evidentiary challenge.
The public, legal, and constitutional implications of Bar’s affidavit are profound. Having already announced that he will resign due to his responsibility as head of the Shin Bet over the service’s colossal failure to foresee the October 7 massacre, he is clearly not fighting this legal battle for himself.
The way the Bar affair is resolved will affect not only the tenure and independence of the next Shin Bet chief. To a very large extent, perhaps even a decisive one, considering what Bar’s affidavit contains, it will shape the security and democratic future of the State of Israel.
Yuval Yoaz is the legal analyst of The Times of Israel’s Hebrew site, Zman Yisrael, where this article was first published.
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