The head of the Jewish Department in the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) suspended himself from active duty Sunday following the publication of a recording in which he appeared to admit that agents routinely arrested Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria without cause.
Following Kan News‘s publication of the recording of the officer identified only as A., Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Settlements and National Missions Minister Orit Strock sent a letter to the head of the National Security Council, Tzachi Hanegbi, demanding an urgent Security Cabinet meeting on the Shin Bet’s “abuse” of Jewish suspects and detainees in Judea and Samaria, as the ministers termed it.
In the recording published by Kan, A. is heard speaking with Avishai Muallem, former head of the Judea and Samaria Police District’s Central Unit, who was investigated after allegedly refusing to cooperate with the Shin Bet.
“We always want to arrest them for questioning, as many as possible. Look how Shin Bet interrogations are conducted with them. We arrest these jerks, even without evidence, for a few days. Put them in detention cells with mice,” the head of the Jewish Department says.
When Muallem protests against this statement, A. clarifies that “this is being handled by the Shin Bet office with the defense minister.”
“We’re starting to get in trouble, bro, they’ll tear us apart,” Muallem says, to which A. responds that they should have arrested suspects even earlier.
“First of all, you should have caught them in a car from the Gilad Farm maybe. There were combustible materials there, maybe they smell of fuel.”
Muallem asks, “If we don’t catch anything, just arrest them?” to which A. replies, “Yes, yes, we’ve been in this movie many times before.”
A. continues, questioning why there weren’t any detainees or roadblocks deployed. “Listen, they come from [the] Binyamin [region of Samaria], they go to Yitzhar [near Nablus], from Yitzhar they continue to Givat Zubi, from there to the Gilad Farm. At each of these places, you need to stop them.”
When Muallem asks why the military didn’t arrest the suspects, A. responds dismissively, “It’s not the army. The army is in Lebanon and Gaza. It’s not the army, it’s worthless. It’s full of Phalangists, they’re settlers themselves.”
The published recordings sparked an uproar in Judea and Samaria and within the Cabinet. The Prime Minister’s Office issued a statement calling the recording “a shocking revelation” and “a real danger to democracy.”
The statement added, “In light of this serious recording, the prime minister will demand a thorough examination of the activities of the Jewish Department in the Shin Bet.
“It is unacceptable that in a state of law, citizens of the country are arrested without evidence and placed in conditions of detention in an illegal and cruel manner. Only in dark regimes does the secret service operate in this dangerous way. In Israel, there will not be a dark shadow government within the state,” the Prime Minister’s Office statement concluded.
A. sent a letter to the Jewish Department staff announcing that he would be suspending himself pending an investigation, the Srugim news site reported.
“The department and I operate solely in accordance with the law and under a clear set of values. I deeply regret the style of the words said, which does not characterize my conduct toward our many interlocutors. I completely reject the attempt to create the impression of extrajudicial practices or lack of restraint,” Srugim quoted from the letter.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, chairman of the Religious Zionism party, condemned the practices revealed in the recording.
“For years we have been crying out against the use of draconian Shin Bet powers against settlers in an undemocratic, unequal, illegal and unconstitutional manner,” Smotrich said. “The recordings prove in black and white the criminality of the Jewish Department in the Shin Bet and the hypocrisy of the Israeli justice system, which has covered up its lies and approved its actions over the years.”
Smotrich added that “Judea and Samaria settlers are not second-class citizens.”
“The head of the Jewish Department must be fired tonight, taken for questioning, and put on trial. So should [Shin Bet Director] Ronen Bar, who has caused and continues to cause crazy damage to the organization and wears down public trust in it to nothing. The Shin Bet is a critical body for Israel’s security, but it needs a clean sweep and urgent repair.”
In their letter to Hanegbi, Smotrich and Strock cited current examples of alleged abuse by the Shin Bet.
“For several days now, suspects in an arson case, which resulted in no physical or mental injuries, have been detained in the custody of Shin Bet for an event that occurred almost three weeks ago. All of the detainees, all of whom are reserve soldiers serving for very long periods, were brutally arrested in the presence of their wives and young children, instead of a normative summons for questioning.”
The ministers’ letter was drafted on April 4, before the publication of the Shin Bet tapes, they wrote. “Of course, following the exposure, the discussion we requested to hold as soon as possible in the Cabinet is doubly important and urgent,” they said.
Israel Ganz, head of the Binyamin Regional Council and chairman of the Yesha Council, called the recordings “shocking” and said they “teach us that the Jewish Department in the Shin Bet operates according to criminal standards.”
He demanded an in-depth investigation and said the agency “must engage in soul-searching and give the public answers.
“Such a course of action destroys public trust in law enforcement authorities. Who will trust a conviction when it is revealed that the body responsible for the investigation takes aggressive measures that violate the law and human rights?!” Ganz asked.
He condemned the Shin Bet official’s characterization of IDF soldiers who live in Judea and Samaria. “These ‘worthless ones’ rushed from their homes on October 7, [2023], and protected the state from collapse. They served for long months, and some of them are still serving at the forefront of the IDF. After these words, the head of the department cannot continue in his position.”
In response, the Shin Bet issued a statement saying, “This conversation refers only to lawbreakers suspected of terrorism who took the law into their own hands. However, since the content of the statements and the style in which they were said do not align with the values of the service and its professional conduct, the head of the service has instructed that an inquiry be conducted with the head of the department, and the results of the inquiry will be presented to him.”
The Prime Minister’s Office rejected Shin Bet’s statement about reviewing the incident under Bar, whom Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired last month, citing his lack of confidence in the agency director.
“The head of the Shin Bet, who was removed from his position by the Cabinet, is prevented from investigating the serious incident of the head of the Jewish Department,” the Prime Minister’s Office statement said. Bar’s successor “will be the one who will deal with the serious problem that has been discovered,” it added.
Israel’s High Court of Justice issued a temporary order barring the prime minister from firing Bar, despite the law authorizing the prime minister to do so. The court cited criminal investigations involving the Shin Bet against Netanyahu. He has said this was a pretext for stripping the government of its mandate by the judiciary and the bureaucracy.
The court is due to consider petitions against Bar’s firing on Tuesday.
Bar said in a letter to the court that his dismissal was for refusing Netanyahu’s alleged request that Bar say that security issues prevent the prime minister from testifying in Netanyahu’s ongoing corruption trial. Netanyahu, who has said that the trial against him is political lawfare, has denied this allegation.
In the Shin Bet’s statement following the publication of A.’s recording, it said that “the arrest of Israeli citizens suspected of terrorist activity is done after exercising professional judgment and careful examination of intelligence information by professionals, including senior officials, and is reviewed again in an external and independent judicial review by the court. This does not justify expressions such as those made during the conversation.”
Originally published by Israel Hayom.