Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denied asking former Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) chief Yoram Cohen to disqualify Naftali Bennett from serving in the security cabinet, the Prime Minister's Office said in a statement on Monday.
"He has apparently forgotten that elected officials, including members of the political-security cabinet, are not required to have security clearance at all," the statement said.
The former agency chief claimed that Netanyahu asked him to do so to Army Radio.
“The prime minister called me privately and told me that he had recently received word from a source that Bennett, during his military service, was dismissed from the General Staff Reconnaissance Unit due to a loyalty problem,” Cohen stated.
“If he was dismissed due to a loyalty problem, he supposedly cannot sit in the cabinet,” Cohen stated that Netanyahu told him.
“He didn’t ask me to verify this; he asked that I disqualify him because he doesn’t have security clearance,” he continued. “I said to him – are you serious? What’s the connection between what happened 30 years ago and now?”
“The fact that the prime minister turns to the head of the Shin Bet and presents a request to use his power to disqualify a political rival, isn’t that shocking? Isn’t that disturbing? In this case, I said no,” Cohen continued.
Bennett responded to Cohen’s statements by saying, “I was not dismissed from the General Staff Reconnaissance Unit,” adding, “I completed a combat course with the unit in 1992.”
“In 2014, as a cabinet member, I demanded that Netanyahu take military action against Hamas terrorists in Gaza. I wanted to eliminate Hamas, and Netanyahu wanted to eliminate me,” Bennett added.
“Yoram Cohen exposed Netanyahu’s lies and paranoia about me.”
Yair Lapid: Netanyahu behaving like 'criminal organization leader'
הראיון של ראש השב״כ לשעבר יורם כהן הוא לא פחות מרעידת אדמה. נתניהו ניסה להשתמש בשב״כ כדי לתפור עלילות ולחסל יריב פוליטי. ככה לא מתנהל ראש ממשלה, כך מתנהל ראש ארגון פשע
— יאיר לפיד - Yair Lapid (@yairlapid) April 7, 2025
Opposition leader MK Yair Lapid denounced Netanyahu’s request, calling it “nothing short of an earthquake” and commenting, “This is not how a prime minister behaves, this is how the head of a criminal organization behaves.”
Leaders of the anti-judicial reform demonstrations – Shikma Bresler, Moshe Radman, Yaya Fink, and Ami Dror – said in a statement that Cohen’s statements prove “those who funded Hamas and whose close advisers are suspected of aiding the enemy during wartime will stop at nothing. Not against political rivals, not against civil protests, and not in general.”
“A person so unfit should not be allowed to dismiss his investigators or appoint their replacements, and he should not continue to serve as prime minister for even one more day. Netanyahu is a danger to Israel’s security,” the three demonstrators concluded.
Yoram Cohen served as Shin Bet chief from May 2011 until May 2016.
Bennett served as economy minister, religious services minister, diaspora affairs minister, and education minister, respectively, during this time period.
Bennett and Netanyahu have clashed over recent days as Bennett accused Netanyahu’s aides of working for Qatar, and launched the “Bennett 2026” political party, which regularly polls higher than Netanyahu’s Likud.