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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday accused the former and current chiefs of the Shin Bet of extortion. Netanyahu said Ronen Bar and his predecessor Nadav Argaman were committing crimes against a sitting prime minister.
Netanyahu spoke after Argaman, appointed by the prime minister and serving as the head of Shin Bet from 2016 until 2021, said in an interview that Netanyahu had attempted to buy quiet along the southern border with Qatari money.
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Nadav Argaman, Benjamin Netanyahu, Ronen Bar
(Photo: Ohad Sweigenberg, Yair Sagi, J. Scott Applewhite / AP)
The former Shin Bet chief, who had expressed criticism over the government's legislative push to weaken the judiciary, said he has thus far refrained from revealing information out of respect for the working relations between the head of the internal security agency and the government leader. However, if he saw Netanyahu violating the law, he would speak out and reveal all he knows.
The Shin Bet was currently investigating members of Netanyahu's inner circle who allegedly received payment from Qatar for advocating for the Gulf nation.
Netanyahu said Argaman's threats were part of Bar's extortion campaign through daily briefings to reporters. The prime minister has signaled his intention to fire Bar, a move that would pose a conflict of interest amid the ongoing investigation.
"This is a serious accusation against the head of a national organization," the Shin Bet said in a statement. "Ronen Bar, as chief, was devoting all of his time to matters of security, efforts to bring about the release of the hostages and the protection of democracy. Any other statement on the matter would be baseless."
Argaman denied that he had threatened Netanyahu and said heads of the Shin Bet naturally are privy to much information, "but we do not throw threats around. If we would think that things we know of, pose a danger to Israel's national security, we would use them according to the law."
He went on to say that Israel would know how to deal with the many enemies that threaten it from outside, but the fracturing Israeli society from within could be beyond repair. |I am concerned over the fact that the prime minister is intentionally harming Israeli society, causing friction between members of the population, to preserve his rule."
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Netanyahu has refused to panel a national commission of inquiry into the failings of his government, the IDF and the security services leading up to the Oct. 7 massacre and the ensuing war. The military and the Shin Bet conducted internal probes into their failings and the leaders have assumed responsibility for those failures.
Netanyahu said that Bar was responsible for the Shin Bet's intelligence failures and denied reports that Bar had warned him that there would be no way to avoid war with Hamas and had urged him to allow targeted killings of its leaders. The prime minister claimed he had instructed Bar to prepare to take action against Hamas, but the Shin Bet chief did nothing.