The Politics of the Shin Bet: A History - with Amichai Cohen
Israelis are bracing for a crisis between the Government and the Judiciary, after the Government took the unprecedented step of firing the head of the Shin Bet, Ronen Bar, prompting Israel’s Supreme Court to freeze his suspension. Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government have made clear their intent to move forward with Bar’s dismissal, and have already started the search for his replacement.
While much of this is historic, tensions between the Shin Bet and Israel’s elected leaders are nothing new. In fact, this friction goes back to the founding of the State.
Our guest is Amichai Cohen, who joins us from Israel. Amichai is an expert on Israel’s internal security agency, and the laws concerning Israel’s national security. He is a Senior Fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, where he leads the program on national security. Amichai is also the author of four books, and a professor of law at Ono Academic College. His latest article, about the firing of Ronen Bar, is available here: https://en.idi.org.il/articles/58760
Full Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
AC: The only person which can give the head of the Shin Bet an order to do something for political reasons is the Prime Minister. And it's explicitly stated in the law that the head of the Shin Bet has permission in some cases to tell the Prime Minister, I'm not doing this. This is a political order. And this tension historically was something that was always evident in the work of the Shin Bet.
DS: It is 10:00 AM on Wednesday, March 26th in New York City. It is 4:00 PM on Wednesday, March 26th in Israel as Israelis get ready to wind down their day. Before we move on to today's conversation, one housekeeping note. On Tuesday, May 13th at the 92nd Street Y, I will be delivering the State of World Jewry Address at 7:30 PM on the 13th. If you'd like to register for the event, please go to the show notes. We'll have a link to it, or just go to the 92nd Street Y events page. I'll be giving this speech and it'll be followed by a conversation I'll be having with Rabbi David Ingber at the Y. Now on to today's conversation. Last Friday, Israel's cabinet voted unanimously to dismiss Shin Bet Chief Ronen Bar. The move marked the first time in Israeli history that the government has fired the head of the domestic security agency. Bar's final day in office will be April 10th, though Israel's Supreme Court has frozen his suspension. So whether or not that is his last day remains to be seen. But either way, Prime Minister Netanyahu's announcement last week about ending Bar's term increased tensions between the Shin Bet and the government, bringing it to what some are characterizing as a boiling point and leading to mass protests across Israel. Now, there's a tendency to think that this tension began with the current Prime Minister, with Prime Minister Netanyahu. What we have learned in reality is that it stretches back decades to the very founding of the state from Ben Gurion all the way up through Menachem Begin and beyond. In this episode, we'll explore the Shin bet, the history of the enduring rivalry between the Shin Bet and various prime ministers, what Israeli law says about whether or not the government has the authority to fire the head of the Shin Bet, especially during the investigation of the Prime Minister's office. We'll also try to understand what is the Shin Bet. I've heard a lot of comparisons in the popular press over here in the United States comparing to the Shin Bet to the FBI or comparing it to MI-5 and the truth is, it's all of those things and none of those things. And so also getting a better understanding of what the Shin Bet is and the unique role it plays in the Israeli security system. We have the perfect person to help us unpack all of this. Dr. Amichai Cohen, who is a law professor at the Ono Academic College in Israel, joins us from Israel. He's also a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, and he's widely regarded in Israel as the expert on Israeli national security law. Amichai, welcome to Call me Back.
AC: Thanks for having me.
DS: Before we dive in, Amichai, can you just explain what is the Shin Bet and how would you define the role it plays in just the overall security system in Israel?
AC: So the Shin Bet is Israel's internal security agency. Now because of the amount of threats, security threats facing Israel, actually the Shin Bet is much more important in Israel than perhaps other internal security agencies in other countries. It has three uh, main roles. The first one is to protect Israel against serious offenses against the states, including terrorism. So, of course preventing terrorism, but also preventing espionage from other countries. This is, its, uh, most important role. The second role it has is, uh, similar perhaps to the US Secret Service, and it's protecting the most important persons within Israeli government and also Israel institutions, both, uh, in Israel and mainly around the world. And its, uh, third role is to protect Israel against, uh, serious threats to Israel's democracy. Which I think is perhaps the most problematic aspect of his role because it has, first of all, to define who constitutes a threat to Israeli democracy. But in practice it means against external influence campaigns in social networks, and also some work against organizations within Israel that have plans to undermine or, uh, subvert Israeli democracy.
DS: How would you define the difference between the role of the Shin Bet versus the role of the Mossad, and versus the role of IDF military intelligence?
AC: So, IDF military intelligence traditionally deals with military intelligence, so gathering intelligence regarding targets and plans of the enemy from outside. The Mossad deals with external threats and operations outside of Israel. The Shin Bet deals with threats coming from inside Israel. The point of course to understand is that inside Israel is a somewhat opaque term. Is Gaza inside or outside Israel? The territories.
DS: The West Bank.
AC: Exactly. So is it outside or inside Israel.
DS: But it's understood that you hear the Shin Bet as a much more prominent player post-October 7th in the overall October 7th war story because the Shin Bet is primarily responsible for intelligence in Gaza. Right?
AC: It seems that the main problem of the Shin bet regarding Gaza was that the traditional modus operandi of the Shin Bet was to have a lot of agents. This is the way it operates within the West Bank. It has a lot of agents and it gathers information. And this was not possible with regards to the Gaza Strip because of the way Hamas operated in the Gaza Strip and its internal security operations that were very effective.
DS: Meaning Hamas was so effective, both operating in an analog way, so it was hard to penetrate to communication networks, A. And B, Hamas was so ruthless about enforcing loyalty to Hamas that it was harder for human intelligence, spies basically, those kinds of capabilities to be able to penetrate the Hamas network.
AC: Exactly. Yahya Sinwar himself, before he became the leader of Hamas, he was never accused of killing Israelis. He only killed Palestinians. He was responsible for internal security. This was his claim for greatness within Hamas to internally control, leaking and avoiding the ability of the Shin Bet to penetrate into Hamas.
DS: Okay, so we're gonna go back into history in a moment, but I just want a snapshot of where we are. So after Prime Minister Netanyahu announced his plan to fire Ronen Bar, the head of the Shin Bet, Bar released a letter, and I wanna read from that letter he wrote in the letter I'm quoting here. “These baseless claims serve only as a cover for entirely different improper motives, aimed at disrupting the ability of the Israeli security agency to fulfill its role with impartiality and accordance with the law and for the benefit of Israeli citizens.” Okay, so in accordance with the law, Bar rights. What law is Bar referring to?
AC: He's referring to the Shin Bet law, which authorizes the Shin Bet to operate within Israel. It's actually a relatively recent law. It was only enacted in 2002 after years of the Shin Bet operating within the general authority of the government without having an explicit law. And this law specifically authorizes the Shin Bet to investigate any threats to Israeli security and any threats, as I said, to Israeli democratic institutions. And there is an ongoing investigation regarding the connections between, uh, people in the close circle of Prime Minister Netanyahu and Qatar. There is a very uneasy public discussion now between the Prime Minister and the, uh, head of the Shin Bet, Ronen Bar, regarding this investigation, the Prime Minister claiming that this entire investigation is a hoax. It's only intended to prevent the government from removing Ronen Bar from his role. And Ronen stating no, the reason that the Prime Minister, and this is the letter you quoted, I think the reason the Prime Minister is trying to remove me from office is because of this investigation that comes to the closest circle of, uh, Netanyahu.
DS: Alright. So how would you describe the institutional tension between the Shin Bet and the government. Not specifically this government, but just generally speaking, not this specific Shin Bet leadership. I'm talking about just institutionally, structurally, what is the built intention between these two bodies?
AC: There are actually two tensions, with your permission, that influence the work of the Shin Bet. The first tension is between its role in preventing terrorism and the rule of law. Right. So historically the Shin Bet saw its main role as preventing terrorism and when it conflicted with the rule of law, specifically with regards to using investigation techniques that might not be in accordance with the law, meaning use of some sort of force in investigation. Historically, the Shin Bet preferred using these techniques over the rule of law, and perhaps we'll go into this a little later. This tension is talked about and is recognized and it's clear everybody knows about it. The second tension, which is not so much talked about, is between the fact that in order for Israel to be able to confront its real enemies within, and without, it had to construct an immensely powerful internal security organization and this is a Shin Bet. The Shin Bet has a lot of powers, it has a lot of information. It has a lot of abilities for surveillance and for other ways it can prevent terrorism and prevent threats to Israel. But the fact that such a strong organization was built creates a danger. It's a danger to democracy, and there's a danger that the political people will try to use these powers against their internal opposition, internal rivals within Israel. And this tension historically was something that was always evident in the work of the Shin Bet.
DS: I assume, especially because as you said, the Shin Bet is also responsible for the equivalent of the Secret Service in the US, so the Shin Bet also has intimate, intimate access and visibility into Israel's elected leaders. So they have this unfettered access to them, which if they wanted to, they could compromise these political actors because of the information they have about them.
AC: Yes. But up until a few weeks ago there was not a claim that the Shin Bet would use its power for its own agenda against elected political leaders. The real danger people, uh, spoke about was political leaders trying to use the Shin Bet against their rivals, and we have a lot of historical experience with such, uh, issues.
DS: So let's do that. Can you give some of those examples? Let's go back to Ben Gurion.
AC: As early as the 1950s, Ben Gurion, the head of the Shin Bet was Isser Harel. Isser Harel was a member of Ben Gurion’s Party. Ben Gurion used the Shin Bet in order to listen to conversation of his political opponents, and when I say political opponents, both from the left, the then Mapam party, which was almost a communist party. So he thought they are a threat to democracy from the left. And also the Herut party, which later became the Likud party, which he thought of the, uh, fascist party. And so a threat from the right. Both of these were under close Shin Bet surveillance in the 1950s and actually much later. When Menachem Begin first joined the National Unity Government just before the Six Days War.
DS: For our listeners, I just want to set this up. So Begin was leading the Herut party, which became the Likud party, which was the opposition party for most of Israel's history until 1977 when he got elected Prime Minister. But 10 years before that, in 1967, the Labor Party was still in power and led by Levy Eshkol, the Prime Minister, and Israel finds itself in the middle of the six day war. And Begin who's the leader of the opposition, goes to Eshkol and says, I will join your government, Israel's at war, let's create a national union government. I will stand shoulder to shoulder. So it was quite a dramatic image of these two parties, you know, fierce political opponents, and at times actually, if you go back to the founding of the state, before the founding of the state, violent opponents of one another to imagine these two leaders standing side by side in the same government.
AC: When Begin is appointed the minister, he comes into his first government meeting and then the head of the Shin Bet is there and he tells him, I know you're listening to my conversations, but he said it with a smile.
DS: Begin tells this to the head of the Shin Bet?
AC: Yeah. He tells him, I know you're listening to my conversations.
DS: Wow.
AC: He says this with a smile. He did not want to go into conflict, especially not with important security figures within Israel, which he deeply respected. Begin had a lot of respect for the leaders of the security agencies within Israel. In fact, when he came into power in 1977, when he won the election, he did not change any person leading any agency. So they all offered resignations and Begin said, no, you do not have to resign from your offices. You are professionals. You will stay in place. But this does not mean that there were no tensions between Begin and the head of the Shin Bet. There were two reasons for this tension. First, Begin thought, as I said before, that Achituv was following him, was listening to his conversations, that the Shin Bet was used politically against him. And the second one is that Begin was a true liberal. And as a true liberal, he was actually opposed to using the investigation techniques that he knew that the Shin Bet was using in its anti-terrorism campaign and investigations. So there were tensions there between Begin and the head of the Shin Bet, but he let him stay. He did not, uh, remove him from office. He did not fire him. He let him stay in office. We have to understand that a lot of the work of the Shin Bet is, of course, done secretly. And before the 1990s, we didn't even know the name of the head of the Shin Bet. This was not public information. I mean, people knew. People in the, you know, circle of the, uh, security establishment and of course, important politicians. They knew. But in the press it was forbidden to write the name of the head of the Shin Bet until the 1990s.
DS: I want to talk about the 1980s actually, because right tension between the Prime Minister and the Shein Bet came to a head in the 1980s and what is referred to as the Bus Line 300 affair. So tell us about that.
AC: Right, so the bus line, 300 affair is a turning point in the history of the Shin Bet. So four very young terrorists took control of a bus between Tel Aviv and Ashkolon. The 300, uh, bus, there were 41 people on the bus, and one of the people of the bus was able to escape, and she called all the security agencies. And the bus was stopped near the Gaza Strip. Quite quickly, the security agencies realized these are four very young terrorists who have no idea what they're actually doing. Two of the terrorists were killed and two were taken alive. Later it was found out that, uh, they were also photographed by the press who was there right in the scene of the event. And these two terrorists were killed. After a day it was revealed they are dead. So they were taken alive and then, reported that they're dead, so someone killed them in the meantime. At first the Shin Bet denied any responsibility. They said the persons responsible were actually the Army, Yitzhak Mordechai, who later became, uh, minister of Defense in Israel, they said he is responsible, he killed them. And actually there was a commission of Inquiry formed by the Minister of Defense and the Shin Bet had a person in the commission of Inquiry. One of the commissioners in the commission of Inquiry was a person working within the Shin Bet, Yossi Ginossar. And it was later revealed that Yossi Ginossar actually orchestrated all the testimonies of the people working at the Shabak, all intended in order to put the blame on the IDF for killing these terrorists. And it was all a lie. The Shin Bet killed them. The head of the Shin Bett ordered their killing under the claim that no terrorist involved in this kind of terrorist operation should get out alive. And he ordered their killings and agents of the Shine Bet killed these terrorists. The problem was that the Shin Bet lied to the Commission of Inquiry to a later commission that was formed in order to verify who is responsible to the Prime Minister to the Minister of Defense. They all lied consistently regarding what actually happened. This happened in 1984. In 1985, three important high level people within the Shin Bet went to the Attorney General and told him the entire story and told him both that the Shin Bet killed these terrorists, and more importantly, I think in in Israeli public opinion that the Shin Bet lied to both the politicians and the legal authorities that tried to find out what actually happened. There was a big discussion in Israel, what to do with this event, and at the end of the day, the way it was resolved was that the president, then President Herzog, who was the father of the current president, Yitzhak Herzog, so Haim Herzog, his father was then the president, he pardoned the head of the Shin Bet and all these agents involved in this killing and in the, uh, coverup to the commissions of inquiry. In the letter requesting the pardon, the then head of the Shin Bet of Avraham Shalom wrote, I did what I did with authority and permission. What he meant to say is that the Prime Minister authorized this killing. And this Shamir, it blew him up. He became very angry about this. You know, he said, I never gave permission both for the killing of the terrorists, and of course I didn't give any permission for lying to the, uh, commissions of inquiry that were involved there. And the fact that it received a lot of press, actually caused the next problem, the Nafsu affair.
DS: So, Amichai, what you're describing was followed by another scandal, and I just want to go through these scandals, like the bus line 300 affair, because these affairs, which I'm now learning, are well known in the realm of Israeli national security law, and even to some degree in the popular press in Israel. I think for our listeners around the world, people are not familiar with them. So there's the bus line 300 affair, and that was followed by another scandal, which was the Nafsu affair, which revealed that Shin Bet agents had systematically lied under oath in cases that were tried in court. So can you talk about what the conclusion of the commission of Inquiry was that was created after the bus line 300 affair and the Nafsu affair.
AC: Izat Nafsu was an officer in the IDF. He was accused and convicted for espionage charges in a military court. His claim from the get go of the discussion in court was that he was tortured by agents of the Shin Bet, and this is the reason he confessed for espionage. He never committed any espionage. They had no evidence. The conviction was based on his confession, and he said the confession was extracted from me by using a force and torture in my investigation. And in his trial, the judges brought in the agents of the Shin Bet and they denied, there was no use of force. In the investigation, his confession was voluntary, et cetera, and the judges, the military judges accepted his confession and convicted him. Now, Izat Nafsu is sitting in jail and he's looking at the press coverage of the Bus 300 Affairs and one of the main characters in the bus 300 Affairs was a person named Yossi Ginossar. Yossi Ginossar was the Shin Bet agent who was sitting in the commission of inquiry that I told you before that he orchestrated this entire attempt of the Shin Bet to put the blame on the IDF for killing the terrorist. So Yossi Ginossar is revealed as the person who orchestrated this, uh, attempt to, uh, mislead the uh, commission of inquiry. And Izat Nafsu and he said this is the person. This is the person who was responsible for my torture. This Yossi Ginossar person was the person who extracted the confession from me. He's the guy who tortured me. And now, after the bus 300 affair, people were much more willing to listen to his claims and following his claims, the Shin Bet confessed that his confession was extracted by, uh, using force. And the National Commission of Inquiry was formed, the Landau Commission. This was in 1987. In 1986, the bus 300 affair, uh, was finished, and in 1987, the Landau Commission was formed. And the Landau Commission found, as you said earlier, an astonishing thing. For almost 20 years, in every case in which people suspected in terrorism were put on trial and their accusations were based on their confessions, and they claimed that the confessions were extracted by using force, the Shin Bet agents came to court and lied about it. Said we are not using force in investigation while they were using. Now the techniques here I wanna emphasize it was not always the use of force per se. The Shin Bet, as other security agencies facing terrorism, had many techniques to extract confessions. Some of them more legitimate, some of them less legitimate. There was a spectrum of techniques used. The use of force was the extreme, right. Uh, people were, uh, tied up on very small chairs for hours. People were not let to sleep. Very loud music was in their cells for days at the time. So there were several techniques that we used on these anyway. The Shin Bet lied about all of them. They never confessed to court about them. The Landau Commission report saw the most problematic aspect in the lies to court. Not necessarily in the use of the investigation techniques. So the Landau Commission said, okay, we understand that sometimes in order to prevent terrorism, the use of extreme investigation techniques is required. However, lying about it is unacceptable. So they put in place a system in which the, uh, special committee and the Knesset had to approve the use of several techniques. And then there would be, uh, levels of approval, legal approval and security approval, whether it's actually a case in which such techniques, uh, should be used. This system was in place for only about a decade because in 1999, the Israeli Supreme Court decided that the Landau Commission was wrong, and the system of approval for using these techniques is illegal. The court said it should legislate a specific law, allowing the use of these techniques, which directly leads us to the enactment of the Shin Bet law.
DS: Okay, so these early Supreme Court rules in that way. So now let's go to 2002. 15 years, some 15 years after the Commission of Inquiry, which was created to establish the legal framework of the Shin Bet a law was legislated called the Shin Bet Law. So what is that law, and how does it define both the Shin Bets authority and the limitations on the Shin Bet?
AC; One has to remember that in 1995, the Shin Bet suffered its most important failure. One of the most important failures in the history of any internal security agencies that it, uh, failed in protecting Prime Minister Rabin. Rabin, who was protected by the Shin Bet, was murdered by persons that the Shin Bet should have known or should have found out that they're trying to do it. What this meant is that when in 2002, the law was enacted, actually the Shin Bet, was facing, uh, severe collapse in public confidence in its abilities to conduct its, uh, most basic roles protecting the Prime Minister. And in addition, this is the beginning of the second Intifada, in which hundreds of Israelis are killed in the streets.
DS: So early 2000s, 140 terrorist attacks against Israelis, more than hundreds, over a thousand Israelis are killed during the course of the Second Intifada, right? Bus bombings, cafe bombings, nightclub bombings, right?
AC: And the Shin Bet is the most important security agency that is supposed to prevent these from happening, right? So we have a problem with public confidence in the abilities of the Shin Bet. And the law actually accompanies reform in the way the Shin Bet thinks about itself and in the way the public thinks about the Shin Bet. It sets clear parameters for the authority of the Shin Bet. It also puts limits on the things the Shin Bet can use. The most important change was not necessarily the law, but an internal change within the Shin Bet that led it to become a much more technological organization basing its abilities on surveillance, on gathering of electronic information. Investigation techniques became not so much the use of the specific techniques, but much more sophisticated techniques. So the organization underwent a reform in terms of the law and in terms of the techniques and the authorities it was using in order to gather information and it succeeded. In 2003, 2004, the level of terrorism decreased significantly.
DS: And you think that's a result of the reform?
AC: It's a result of the reform. It's not a result of the law. The law itself is part of the reform, right? Part of putting in place an organization that is much more connected to use of technology that is, is much more sophisticated, that has a much clearer vision of the organization and the law is connected to this reform.
DS: Okay, so there are two clauses in the Shin Bet Law, which in the current situation can be read as internally contradictory within the law. One clause clearly states that the government has the authority to shorten the term of the head of the Shin Bet, but another clause states that political motives cannot be pursued in any of these decisions. So based in the law, can you just describe those clauses? I guess that's my first question. What are these two clauses?
AC: Okay. With your permission I’ll tart with the second one, which is a unique and important one and it relates to a tension we spoke about earlier. So actually when you quoted the law, you didn't quote the first part and it's that the service the Shin Bet will only operate, and now I will use a Hebrew word with your permission, the word mamlachti, which has no easy translation to English is an extremely important word in the Shin Bet Law. What does it mean, mamlachti. It means actually three things. It's a term coined by David Ben Gurion in the very early days of Israel. It means non-partisanship, right? So the public service, and especially the Shin Bet should not operate in a partisan way, and it's clear why it was put in place. It's the historical lesson learned from the earlier days in which the Shin Bet was used in a partisan way. It means kingdom over king, right? That law is more important than the person, right? So the Shin Bet cannot be given orders that are against the law. And once again, when looking at the history of the Shin Bet, one understands that it's embedded in the historical lessons that the Shin Bet learned, that it has to follow the law over specific interests and specific orders it might receive. And it also means a third meaning for the term mamlachti is that public goods overrides the individual interests. And for Ben Gurion, this was most important, right? You have to operate in a way which is in the interest of the public, not in individual interest. So this is an extremely important term in Israeli culture and Israeli public opinion in Israeli operation of many agencies. But the only agency in which this law is put in place in the law is the Shin Bet law. And what this law does, it's that the Shin Bet will not be given a mission in order to advance political interests. What it actually means is that the Shin Bet head has an independent position vis-a-vis the Prime Minister. The only person which can give the head of the Shin Bet an order to do something for political reasons is the Prime Minister, because he is the only politician who can give orders to the head of the Shin Bet. And it's explicitly stated in the law that the head of the Shin Bet has a permission, in some cases, to tell the Prime Minister I'm not doing this. This is a political order, right? You have given me a political order. This specific special permission for the head of the Shin Bet to use his position and tell the Prime Minister in extreme cases of political orders, no, was used by heads of the Shin Bet. So, for example, Yoram Cohen, who was uh, the previous head of the Shin Bet, uh, said in a, in a televised, uh, interview that when the Prime Minister told him to investigate leaks from cabinet meetings, he said, this is a political request. I'm not investigating these political requests. Within the law it's written. So this creates a tension between the head of the Shin Bet and the Prime Minister, which is written into the law. It's not something that is a surprise to people following the, um, history of the Shin Bet. The Shin Bet was given express authority sometimes to tell the Prime Minister, I'm not doing this. So how does this relate to the issue of removal of the head of the Shin Bet from office? Now if the result of any refusal of the head of the Shin Bet to an order by the prime Minister would be his removal from office, this undermines the entire principle of Non-partisanship of the Shin Bet. Because if in any case in which the Prime Minister tells the head of the Shin Bet to do something political, and the head of the Shin Bet refuses, according to its authority by the law, then the Prime Minister simply removes him from office, then it means that there is actually no protection to the head of the Shin Bet. So there is a connection here between these two articles, as you suggested in your question. Now, it was never put to a test. No head of the Shin Bet was ever fired. Indeed, heads of the Shin Bet have sometimes told the Prime Minister, this is a political order and we will not operate according to it. But it was never the case that the Prime Minister tried to fire them. Here is the first instance in which there is a possibility that the head of the Shin Bet might be removed from office when he claims that the reasons are political and not reasons of public good, not reasons of his failure in his office.
DS: So the head of the Shin Bet is on the one hand, directed by the Prime Minister and has to have the confidence clearly implicit in all of this of the Prime Minister. But the head of the Shin Bet also built into this law, has the authority to push back on the Prime Minister if he believes he's being directed to pursue an operation that is politically motivated rather than of a security nature.
AC: Exactly. Now, of course, I don't wanna exaggerate the number of times that this has happened. These are very extreme and isolated cases. It has happened before. It's not the first time that such a thing has happened.
DS: Is there a risk from your perspective, that the head of the Shin Bet is not officially, not formally, but the culmination of all these powers given to the head of the Shin Bet, is at a practical level, given the authority, at least in the mind potentially of a Shin Bet head, that he's not only the enforcer, but the judge. That he almost has this judicial role of determining, you know, I'm uncomfortable with the political acts that this Prime Minister is making because there's often a fine line between, I mean, as we know through the history of war and peace throughout all Western democracies where the rule of law is strong, that there's often a fine line between actions that a head of state or an elected leader makes in a wartime situation or on behalf of security, there's a fine line between those decisions and their motivations and the political needs and interests of that leader. So, I mean, that's just very common. By the way, we get this all the time in the United States, right? There are often questions about whether or not elected leaders make decisions in the realm of national security that have a political advantage. It may not be singularly about political advantage, but they have some kind of political advantage in addition to the security needs, and this is putting the head of the Shin Bet in the job, it sounds like, in the role of making that determination. Which it does, really to the extent that anyone gets concerned about it, is civilian control of the military in most democracies, including in Israel. And this actually, to some degree, I think has the potential to put the head of a security agency in control of the civilians, in control of the political democratically elected leaders.
DS: Exactly. So three short points regarding this. First of all, indeed the Shin Bet is a very secret organization and therefore a lot of conspiracies are connected to the Shin Bet. Right. Uh, days after Rabin was murdered, several conspiracy theories were in the air. Some people still believe regarding the role of the Shin Bet in the murder. Of course, when you speak about the secret organization, you know the anxieties that you spoke about are there. Second, one has to look at the context. There are actually not many instances in which this authority was used. If the authority would've been used, you know, extensively by the head of the Shin Bet, then uh, you're correct, but it's not used extensively. As I said, these are isolated instances in which it is used. And third, one has to think about the specific current context in which this discussion erupts, and it's a discussion over, as we said at the beginning of our talk, uh, discussion over the responsibility and the ability to investigate specific suspicions regarding operations of the closest circle of the Prime Minister. So once again, in theory the authority of the head of the Shin Bet, if it's used extremely, then it might prove problematic. In this case, we should not forget that the government has the authority to remove the head of the Shin Bet from his office. So this authority does not, uh, disappear. They have the authority. It's only that there is some kind of balance here between their use of the authority and the role of the head of the Shin Bet. Clearly the head of the Shin Bet when he was dismissed from office cannot say, I am refusing to be dismissed because I feel this is political. He is required to wait for a decision of the court. He cannot by himself say, I'm not going. There is a need for some external body to arbitrate this disagreement at this level.
DS: I take your point that this inflated role of kind of being the judge of what's appropriate and what's political and what's not political is not, in a sense, formalized and it is rarely used to the extent that it is ever used. But I am wondering, listening to this conversation just and as I've been watching events in Israel, there's just a culture where the head of the Shin Bet thinks of himself in this role as judge. And the, the former head of the, one of the former heads of the Shin Bet, which you alluded to, gave this interview with Channel 12 a couple weeks ago in Israel where he said something like, you know, I know a lot about the Prime Minister. I watched the Prime Minister. I saw things that would be deeply problematic and disturbing. And if the Prime Minister goes too far in whatever he's doing right now, that this former head of the Shin Bet had a problem with, I'm gonna go public with these things. I do wonder if Israel and the Israeli security establishment, and these laws have created a little bit of a mess here for the way the head of the Shin Bet views his role in society.
AC: I actually don't think so. I'm not trying to defend Nadav Argaman for what he said in the specific interview, and, uh, I, I actually don't know what he meant. And I'm not sure he meant what people say he meant, but at any rate, people serving in the capacity of the heads of the Shin Bet have generally been people who were supportive of the way the government operated. One also has to remember that Prime Minister Netanyahu has been in office for a long time now. So, uh, you know, suggesting that people have these views and are trying to judge the politicians, if this was true, one would've seen this conflict much earlier. It's, uh, usually they are part of the decision making. These are people that the Prime Minister trusts. He works with them. What happens now is that the Prime Minister has said he lost confidence, but he's doing it in a very unique setting in which there is an investigation against the Prime Minister and there is in the background, there is another tension and much more important one between the head of the Shin Bet and the Prime Minister, and it's regarding the question of responsibility for what happened in October 7th. Just over two weeks ago, the Shin Bet publicized a summary, a short summary of its internal inquiry regarding the October 7th, uh, failure. And in it, the Shin Bet said, we have failed, we are responsible. We didn't, uh, follow the signals. We had the conceptions, et cetera, et cetera. In the final page of this inquiry. The Shin Bet writes about the responsibility of the political level, and they said they're not naming the Prime Minister, but it's clear that they're relating to the Prime Minister, we have brought warnings. We have said to the political level that there are dangers, that the Qatari money is financing Hamas. That the Hamas is building its powers. We were not completely in line with the thinking that Hamas is deterred and nothing is going to happen, but we were rejected by the political level. This is in direct confrontation with the way that the Prime Minister has tried to paint the picture in the past year and a half since October 7th saying, you know, the entire security establishment, no one told me that there is a danger that Hamas is preparing something, and they were all in agreement. Here, if the head of the Shin Bet is correct and he has documents, uh, supporting his claim, then clearly the responsibility of the Prime Minister should be investigated because he said, we told the Prime Minister that there are these dangers. If the Prime Minister is correct and he was told nothing, then the head of the Shin Bet is completely, you know, he's lying outright in writing. You know, there was nothing. No one ever told the Prime Minister, then this person is simply not telling the truth. Either way, I think an investigation should take place. This is not like the IDFs internal inquiries in which there was no clear contradiction. Here there is a clear contradiction between two factual stories about what did the political leaders, especially the Prime Minister know before October 7th, what they were told by the security agencies. This is extremely problematic because currently the government is not investigating its own responsibility, right? There is no commission of inquiry. Any commission of inquiry, right? They have this problem with the Commission of Inquiry formed by the, uh, president of the Supreme Court. There is no inquiry regarding the responsibility of the cabinet of the Prime Minister of the government, and this tension, I think, is the forefront of what is going on here. Just yesterday, documents started leaking regarding what exactly did the Shim Bet tell the Prime Minister? This is the worst outcome possible.
DS: Alright, Amichai, we will leave it there. Thank you for this crash course. We needed it, this tutorial, and you definitely educated, both our audience and me, and I look forward to having you back on.
AC: Thank you very much for having me.
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