Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a pointed and fiery sworn affidavit in response to Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) head Ronen Bar on Sunday, claiming mainly that the intelligence chief did not alert him properly to Hamas’s October 7 attack and did not embrace the dangers beforehand.
The affidavit, the deadline for which was extended from Thursday, addresses some of Bar’s underlying tones and his points, but also ignores some.
He noted in every one of his points that the intelligence chief “lied.” What happens next is up to the High Court of Justice.
In his affidavit last week, Bar asserted that Netanyahu decided to fire him due to a series of measures he carried out that posed political threats against the prime minister.
These include Bar’s refusal to approve security measures that would have delayed Netanyahu’s testimony in his criminal trial hearings; the Shin Bet’s investigations into figures close to the prime minister and the agency’s probe into October 7; and Bar’s insistence on the formation of a State Commission of Inquiry, which the government opposes.
Warnings of an attack pre-October 7
Bar wrote in his affidavit that at 11 p.m. on October 6, 2023, military officers in the South received updates on activity in the enclave that was out of the ordinary. At 1:33 a.m. on October 7, a Shin Bet team was sent to the South, fearing a concentrated infiltration attack. Then, he wrote, at 3:03 a.m., the agency put out an alert warning of the possibility of an attack, and at 4:30 a.m., held a situational assessment. At 5:15 a.m., he wrote, he instructed to update Netanyahu’s military secretary of the developments.
“Bar’s claim that he warned of the war, that he alerted everybody, is a lie. His blindness is the greatest intelligence failure Israel has ever seen,” wrote the prime minister on Sunday. Bar did not wake him up either, he wrote.
The Shin Bet chief also didn’t alert the local emergency standby squads and the security chiefs in the southern kibbutzim, nor did he order to evacuate and shut down the Nova music festival, the largest site of the massacre where 393 people were killed.
The prime minister added that in the 5:15 a.m. situational assessment – which was “only an hour and a quarter before the massacre began” – there was no war alert.
Bar said at that meeting, according to Netanyahu, who provided quotes from meetings throughout his affidavit, that the alertness level is “at a medium to avoid a miscalculation... we want to be careful.” He also suggested “refraining from a widespread plan of attack.”
How to handle Gaza
Bar wrote in his affidavit that the agency provided security alerts about Hamas’s movements before October 7, throughout 2023. He specified that “our enemies are sensing that the time is ripe for an attack” due to the intense social divide and strife within Israel, and that “we might find ourselves in a complete storm.”
Bar listed two dates in April and June 2023 when the Shin Bet acted, recommending a series of preemptive strikes in the former, and warning of war in the latter – on the same night that the Knesset voted on the controversial reasonableness clause as part of the judicial reform legislation.
Netanyahu did not address these specific dates. He wrote that throughout 2023, Bar pushed to strengthen Gaza economically, and veered away from assassinations in order to “keep the quiet.”
In a cabinet meeting on January 8, 2023, when Netanyahu suggested striking Saleh al-Arouri, the founding commander of Hamas’s military wing who was assassinated a year later in Beirut, Bar allegedly said, “I don’t think it’s the right call, it could place the agency in a complicated situation.”
Addressing slain Hamas leader and October 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar, Bar is quoted as saying, a month later on February 12, “Sinwar is smart. He won’t drag Gaza into a war.”
Netanyahu also quoted from a Shin Bet intelligence report from October 3, 2023 – four days before the massacre – which said that the understanding between Israel and Hamas of “quiet for ease” (quiet on the terrorism front in exchange for economic and lifestyle improvements) “have the potential to keep the enclave steady.”
These quotes attempt to emphasize Bar’s intelligence failure, to show that he had the complete wrong idea about Hamas throughout this time.
Netanyahu’s corruption trial testimonies
Bar wrote that he refused to provide a legal opinion that would prevent Netanyahu from consistently testifying in his criminal trial hearings. He said he had been pressured to sign a document written by the prime minister’s team stating that the testimonies should be completely private. He refused to sign it.
Netanyahu did not address this, but provided quotes showing his willingness to testify, which “is important,” but that due to the security situation, the government itself was forced to relocate its own meetings underground.
Bar said at the time that he hadn’t yet studied the issue in depth, and would return with an answer. Netanyahu responded that this can’t be delayed even by a day. “You have to act fast,” he said.
Bar did actually give an opinion that convinced the Jerusalem District Court to move the standard hearing proceedings to the more secure location in the Tel Aviv District Court – which is unprecedented, and which is where the hearings currently take place.
These quotes are dated in the affidavit to November 13, 2024; Netanyahu began testifying on December 2.
These quotes attempt to strike back at the sentiment that Netanyahu was running from his hearings, showing instead he welcomed them with urgency.
Surveilling civilian protesters
Bar wrote that Netanyahu asked him to surveil civilians active in the protest movement against the government, and provide details on their identities. He added, “the expectation was made clear to me to surveil ‘those that fund the protests,’” meaning, to follow the money.
The Shin Bet chief said that these requests were denied, and that they were made after work meetings, so they would not be recorded.
Netanyahu’s response to this in his affidavit was particularly biting: “Bar is lying with a baseless claim, one that is disconnected from reality, and changes depending on the circumstances.” He did not specify what these circumstances were.
Quoting from a work meeting dated June 6, 2023, when judicial reform protests were at a high, Netanyahu had said, “I think there is a methodical process which determined that there is no such thing as privacy, in your own space or in public,” presumably referring to the public protests against him.
He said he wanted to loop in Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara “to understand what the legal limits are; the law must be obeyed... It is unclear to me what the limits are to bullying and persecution.” He added that police are short-staffed, so officers attend to smaller threats before they can tackle the larger ones – like threats against the prime minister.
He pushed the point further: “If you walk in the street right now and someone comes at you with a blow horn to the ear and refuses to leave you alone – and they are being paid to do it – is that allowed?”
Bar responded, “I don’t know to tell you.”
This portrays the threatened state Netanyahu felt he was in, and the gap between what he described and what Bar could do. The affidavit does not address the surveillance request.
What also went unaddressed
Netanyahu also did not address some of Bar’s claims: that requests to surveil civilians were made off the record, and that in a case of a constitutional crisis, Bar should adhere to Netanyahu’s directives and not the High Court of Justice.
He also didn’t address what Bar described as a public campaign against him and how it affected the drive to dismiss him – as well as Bar’s claim that his removal from the hostage negotiation team, which came at the same time as demands for an October 7 probe by the agency, was a surprise to him.
Bar was fired by the government back in March. It claimed a “lack of trust” between the prime minister and the agency head, which it said began already on October 7, and that he should have resigned of his own accord after the Shin Bet probe was issued.
The Attorney-General’s Office, which would normally represent the government in such a decision, has fiercely opposed the move, saying that it was not done according to procedure. Petitioners argued that Bar’s firing is political, not professional, and stems from the agency’s investigations into two cases concerning figures close to Netanyahu: The leaked documents case, and the “Qatargate” case.
After a court hearing on the matter on April 8, Chief Justice Isaac Amit, Deputy Chief Justice Noam Sohlberg, and Justice Dafna Barak Erez pushed for a compromise and requested that the government and Bar each submit affidavits. The goal, it said, was to encourage both sides to reach a compromise without further involvement from the court, in what should be a legislative matter.