Israel’s former spymaster accuses Netanyahu

Shin Bet’s Yoram Cohen has said the PM wanted him to snoop on the Mossad and IDF

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked the country's domestic security service to spy on the commander-in-chief of the IDF and the director of the Mossad, former, Shin Bet director, Yoram Cohen, has said.

Cohen was its director between 2011 and 2016, during which time Israel allegedly planned to strike Iran's nuclear facilities. 

“The prime minister asked me for things... and a lot of things I told him, ‘I’m not allowed to do that’,” Cohen told Kan Reshet Bet radio. “It was an important event, an important security move Israel had made preparations for. The prime minister was afraid, justly as far as I’m concerned, that this issue, because it takes months to organize, will leak and get to places it shouldn’t and cause damage.”

“The prime minister asked me to use my tools, that anyone privy to this operation would be surveilled by the Shin Bet, and if someone leaked it to someone or another, then we’d know and take care of him,” Cohen said.

According to the Times of Israel, Cohen’s remarks referred to the 2011 incident in which Netanyahu wanted to track then-Israel Defense Forces (IDF) head Benny Gantz and Tamir Pardo, the head of the foreign intelligence service Mossad at the time. Both were privy to top-secret plans for a strike on Iran’s nuclear program.

Cohen’s remarks appeared to corroborate 2018 reporting by ‘Uvda’, the investigative TV program airing on Channel 12, which first revealed the existence of the spying request. According to ‘Uvda’, Cohen told Netanyahu that Shin Bet was not supposed to use “such drastic measures” against the IDF and Mossad.

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The former spymaster also claimed that “people close to Netanyahu” were actively seeding a media narrative suggesting that the “failure on October 7 was entirely the military’s fault.” The deadly 2023 raid by Hamas appeared to have caught Israel by surprise.

Netanyahu responded by accusing Cohen of being “deeply entrenched in a political campaign” and “trying to fabricate yet another manufactured scandal.”

“The Prime Minister acted to protect a vital state secret, followed legal recommendations, acted according to the law, and did not infringe on anyone's rights,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement.

Gantz also responded to Cohen’s interview, saying that he was not surprised by Netanyahu’s actions because the prime minister has always had a “toxic and suspicious attitude.”

“Even when I came to him with mature operational plans, he was always suspicious, always briefed, always trying to find out if something was being hidden from him,” said the former general, now leader of the National Unity Party.

Netanyahu has been Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, in office from 2009 to June 2021 and since December 2022.