{"id":289615,"date":"2026-02-13T17:03:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T17:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/289615\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T17:03:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T17:03:07","slug":"former-shin-bet-chiefs-officials-call-out-benjamin-netanyahu-zini","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/289615\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Shin Bet chiefs, officials call out Benjamin Netanyahu, Zini"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Several retired Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) chiefs and 31 former department heads\u00a0issued a public letter on Friday opposing\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/israel-news\/politics-and-diplomacy\/article-885970\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu&#8217;s<\/a> comments about former Shin Bet head Ronen Bar and calling\u00a0out &#8220;the silence from the current Shin Bet chief, David Zini.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">&#8220;We express astonishment at the silence of the head of the Shin Bet, David Zini, in light of the unprecedented slander against former head of the service, Ronen Bar, and managers, fighters, and employees who served in the organization on 7\/10, from the Prime Minister&#8217;s entourage and members of the coalition,&#8221; the letter read.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">They also demanded a &#8220;strong response from Zini&#8221; against the comments attacking Ronen Bar, intelligence officials, soldiers, and Shin Bet employees who served in the organization before and during the October 7 massacre.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">The letter mainly cited the &#8220;spread of conspiracy theories&#8221; against Shin Bet officials and the document that Netanyahu submitted to the State Comptroller.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">The documents, spanning from February 2023 to an hour before the attack, indicate that Israel&#8217;s defense echelon misread Hamas\u2019s intentions, characterizing the terror group as deterred and seeking long-term economic arrangements.<\/p>\n<p>He reportedly said <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/israel-news\/benjamin-netanyahu\/article-885728\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">during the Knesset discussion<\/a> that the events of October 7 \u201cwere a severe intelligence failure, but not a betrayal.\u201d The meeting sparked outrage among opposition MKs on the panel who left the discussion early. It went on for approximately five hours.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">Among the quotes Netanyahu reportedly read were those from former prime minister Naftali Bennett. party leader and ex-IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, and former Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) director Ronen Bar.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">The Knesset confirmed that Netanyahu dedicated a significant portion of the discussion to the state comptroller\u2019s review regarding October 7, and presented the committee with materials he had shown to the comptroller.<\/p>\n<p>Amichai Stein, Tzvi Jasper, and Keshet Neev contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Several retired Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) chiefs and 31 former department heads\u00a0issued a public letter on Friday&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,19770,85,46,43,103578,73],"class_list":{"0":"post-289615","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-benjamin-netanyahu","9":"tag-david-zini","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-ronen-bar","14":"tag-shin-bet"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}