Zini meets with AG, said to vow he’ll follow law during foreign interference probe

Shin Bet chief David Zini and Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara met Wednesday, in what was described in Hebrew media as a lengthy attempt to lower tensions, during which Zini reportedly pledged to act according to the law and said he would no longer violate Baharav-Miara’s instructions regarding the ongoing probe into alleged foreign interference in the October 27 election.

The meeting came amid widespread anger at Zini from law enforcement officials and opposition politicians who have criticized him for not providing sufficient evidence in his push to question several Arab politicians as part of the investigation.

The meeting came after Baharav-Miara, on Tuesday, issued a rare public rebuke of Zini after he refused to hand over evidence regarding three of the four Arab politicians that it is seeking to question. She said, “It is not possible to interrogate citizens or elected officials without evidence that justifies it.”

Zini was appointed to head Israel’s domestic security service last year by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and has said he accepted the job because of his ability to be “loyal to the elected leadership.” Netanyahu has alleged, without presenting evidence, that the vote was “stolen” amid very high turnout in Arab communities and has pushed Zini to investigate several leading Arab politicians for allegedly receiving foreign funds ahead of the vote.

Election authorities have said the vote was conducted properly and that the results are valid. But Netanyahu on Wednesday again cast doubt on the results, even as they were certified and presented to President Isaac Herzog, and issued another salvo against the Arab-majority parties in the Knesset, saying they “support terrorism” and “seek to erase the Jewish identity of Israel.”

He called for a swift investigation into “enormous sums of money” he says came from outside Israel with the intent to “influence the results of the election.”

The three officials Zini seeks to question are Ra’am party head Mansour Abbas, Ta’al faction leader Ahmad Tibi and Balad faction chief Sami Abou Shehadeh. The fourth politician, former Joint List chief Ayman Odeh, is suspected of receiving hundreds of thousands of shekels in cash from a foreign source, according to Hebrew media reports, which suggested there is enough evidence to question him. Odeh is due to leave the Knesset once the new crop of lawmakers is sworn in next week, and will thus lose his parliamentary immunity.

According to Channel 13, in his meeting with Baharav-Miara, Zini agreed Wednesday to hand over all relevant evidence to the Attorney General’s Office and cooperate with her instructions regarding the probe.

The report said that the purpose of the meeting was to “calm” tensions between the two officials, and to ensure that the Shin Bet and Attorney General’s Office were on the same page regarding the investigation into the alleged election interference.

Senior officials lambast Zini for ‘negligent,’ ‘political’ conduct

Amid the controversy, senior law enforcement sources told Channel 13 Wednesday that Zini’s conduct since the election “has taken us back 40 years.”

“Zini appears to be tossing out names without evidence and parroting Likud’s talking points,” one source told the outlet.

Legal sources quoted by the outlet said that Zini’s actions raised concerns regarding his ability to effectively do his job: “If it turns out there is no substance to these statements, this cannot simply be overlooked,” the outlet quoted a source as saying.

Sources also claimed that the Shin Bet’s legal counsel has been “completely sidelined” during Zini’s push to investigate Arab lawmakers amid the reported pressure from Netanyahu, and that “heavy influence is being exerted on Zini” to fire the agency’s legal adviser.

Other senior law enforcement officials told Channel 12 that Zini was intentionally dragging his feet and failing to carry out a proper investigation into the Arab politicians for political reasons.

“Zini is playing for time in order to create a narrative, and therefore he is not giving the material to the police so they can start to investigate,” a senior official said.

The Shin Bet, according to one of the officials, “is operating in a negligent fashion and is lying. They are in effect undermining the investigation at this stage through unprofessional stubbornness. We could have moved forward long ago if they were doing their job and not going beyond it.”

“When you open an investigation of public officials, you must have official approvals, even if the initial suspects are their aides,” said an official. “Without these approvals, the police and Shin Bet turn into a tool for the government to carry out political assassinations.”

Another source told Ynet that Zini “doesn’t understand what his role is, what the law is, and what his relationship with the law is,” saying that they “couldn’t believe” that the head of the Shin Bet was conducting himself in such a manner.

One source, pointing to Zini’s failure to provide evidence, described his conduct as “a kind of phishing.”

“To interrogate a member of Knesset you need more than speculation,” a senior official told Ynet.

“The investigation was dirty before it even began,” another source told the Haaretz newspaper.

Also slamming Zini’s conduct Wednesday was incoming Yashar MK Yoram Cohen, himself a former director of the Shin Bet, who said a potentially incoming opposition government would look into Zini’s decisions relating to the election before deciding whether to keep him in the role.

“We will weigh his actions, check the material, see the justifications for what he did,” said Cohen, who is No. 2 in the centrist opposition party, behind leading opposition candidate Gadi Eisenkot, in an interview with Channel 12.

Cohen said Zini was operating “unprofessionally” and that the Shin Bet head was being used by Netanyahu, who appointed him.

At the same time, Cohen acknowledged that the probe itself wasn’t illegitimate, saying he was “convinced that the Shin Bet received information that certain people were given money, and that must be investigated.”

Cohen warned that senior officials in Israel’s security agencies must “raise a black flag” if security chiefs tell them to do things that seem illegal relating to elections and subsequent changes of government.

Netanyahu calls Arab factions ‘Islamist parties that support terrorism’

Meanwhile, Netanyahu released a video statement Wednesday that accused Arab-led political parties of supporting terror and posing an existential threat to Israel.

“Radical Islam is the challenge that is tearing countries apart in Europe today,” Netanyahu said. “It is also the challenge that threatens us. It threatens us from abroad through Iran and its proxies, and from within through Islamist parties that support terrorism.”

“They seek to erase the Jewish identity of Israel,” he continued. “They say so openly. They seek to deprive us of the ability to defend ourselves against our enemies.”

Netanyahu argued that a government that depends on Arab parties will not be able to confront radical Islam and will divide Israeli society.

“Not only will such a government fail to fight our enemies, but it will simply tear us apart from within,” he said. “This is a matter of our very survival.”

He again called for a “broad national government” under his leadership open to all Zionist parties, despite opposition leaders rejecting the prospect of unity with Netanyahu’s Likud party and his far-right allies, whom Netanyahu has vowed to keep as part of any future government he leads.

Turning to the investigation into senior Arab lawmakers, Netanyahu said: “We must get to the truth.”

“There are serious suspicions that foreign countries have been involved, with enormous sums of money, in an effort to influence the results of the election in Israel,” he continued.

Netanyahu noted that Central Elections Committee head Justice Noam Sohlberg “ruled that all obstacles to this investigation must be removed.”

“He is right,” Netanyahu said, without mentioning that Sohlberg has repeatedly chastised those casting doubt on the election results and said that doing so posed “a real danger” to Israel’s democracy.

“We must get to the whole truth, without a cover-up and without delay,” Netanyahu said. “The integrity of elections is a cornerstone of democracy. We must protect it, and we must protect our country.”