Shin Bet security agency chief Ronen Bar told the High Court of Justice on Monday that he had been fired due to expectations from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he be personally loyal to the premier, and said it was made clear to him that he needed to obey Netanyahu and not the Supreme Court in the event of a constitutional crisis.

In a formal statement to the court regarding petitions against the government’s decision to fire Bar, the Shin Bet head insisted he had been fired because of his refusal to meet those expectations of loyalty owing to decisions he made regarding investigations into the prime minister’s aides; his refusal to help Netanyahu avoid testifying in his criminal trial; and the political fallout from the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack.

Bar also rejected accusations by Netanyahu and others that he and the Shin Bet had advance knowledge of Hamas’s October 7 invasion and failed to warn the prime minister, and detailed the steps he and the agency took in the hours before the onslaught in response to the level of threat they believed they were facing.

Bar said that he will soon announce a date on which he intends to quit, but claimed that a court ruling on the petitions against his dismissal was more important than his personal circumstances.

Netanyahu rejected Bar’s submission as “a false statement,” and the Prime Minister’s Office said in response that the Shin Bet head’s own acknowledgement of the agency’s failures justified his termination by the government. The prime minister has been asked by the court to file his response to Bar’s comments in a formal statement of his own.

Bar was fired in a cabinet decision on March 21 at Netanyahu’s recommendation after the prime minister said he had lost faith in Bar’s ability to do his job. However, several government watchdog groups alleged that the decision was tainted by a conflict of interest amid Shin Bet investigations into Netanyahu’s aides, as well as by severe procedural problems in the dismissal process.

The High Court of Justice froze Bar’s dismissal and told the government and the Attorney General’s Office to work out a solution for resolving the procedural failures, while also inviting Bar to submit his version of events to the court.

Bar submitted an eight-page public statement on Monday via the State Attorney’s Office, along with a 31-page classified statement with five appendices providing greater detail and documentation of his claims.

In his open declaration, Bar insisted that, despite the claims by Netanyahu and his legal representative, his relationship with the prime minister only started to deteriorate at the end of 2024.

The origin of the deterioration “was not on a professional level but rather [due to] the expectation of personal loyalty on my part to the prime minister,” Bar wrote, adding that Netanyahu had praised the Shin Bet during the war for its part in rescuing hostages and eliminating senior terror officials in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and beyond.

Bar identified November 2024 in particular as a turning point, noting his authorization of an investigation into a leak of classified........

© The Times of Israel