Shin Bet head Ronen Bar lied in his sworn affidavit to the High Court of Justice this week, Religious Party Zionist MK Ohad Tal argued during an interview in the Jerusalem Post Studio.
Tal is the first MK to be interviewed at the state-of-the-art studio.
Bar claimed in his affidavit that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had pressured him to sign off on a security assessment that would have led to the delay of the prime minister’s criminal testimony.
According to Tal, no such thing happened – rather, the prime minister merely requested to tighten up security after a drone hit his property in Caesarea on October 19.
Tal acknowledged, however, that he had not seen the classified part of the affidavit, which Bar said included proof of his claim. Rather, Tal was basing his opinion on a report from Channel 12’s Amit Segal.
Bar claims he was fired over Shin Bet’s Oct 7 investigation
Bar claimed in his affidavit that one of the reasons he was fired was because the Shin Bet’s internal investigation of the October 7 Hamas massacre, included criticism of the political echelon’s ignoring national security warnings issued by the Shin Bet in April and July of 2023, regarding the danger of the social schism created by the government’s judicial reforms.
According to Tal, this was an attempt to create a “false narrative”. The job of the Shin Bet was to provide specific warnings of attacks, and not “general warnings” such as the ones issued in 2023. As a member of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Tal said that the Shin Bet’s line had consistently been that Hamas was not interested in a military confrontation.
Tal also discussed the war in Gaza, the hostages, and the issue of haredi IDF service.