A Shin Bet security agency official is under investigation for leaks of classified information to journalists and a government minister, it was revealed on Tuesday.

The material relates to an ongoing police and Shin Bet investigation into possible extremist far-right Kahanist ideology taking root among the police force. According to the suspect’s lawyers, material he conveyed that was not classified also relates to unpublicized parts of the Shin Bet’s investigation of failures surrounding Hamas’s October 7 assault.

The development further increased tensions between the political echelon and the country’s security and judicial system, already at boiling point with the government’s moves to fire Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara and Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar.

Rumors of the affair began to swirl on Monday, and Likud MKs Tally Gotliv and Avihai Boaron tweeted partial details of it, prompting the judge overseeing the case to partially lift a gag order on the investigation, which is being carried out by the Shin Bet internal security service and the Justice Ministry’s Department of Internal Police Investigations (DIPI).

The court kept in place a prohibition on the media reporting the name of the arrested Shin Bet official, who has been identified only by the Hebrew letter Aleph. But the initial ban on identifying the alleged recipients of the leaked information was lifted, and they were named as Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli, Channel 12 journalist Amit Segal, and Israel Hayom reporter Shirit Avitan Cohen.

Aleph was remanded into custody for a further day by Lod District Court on Tuesday afternoon. His attorney said his client believed it was in the public’s interest to know the information he is accused of leaking, and that the leak did not endanger Israel’s security.

The Shin Bet official, reportedly a 25-year veteran of the service, is reportedly suspected of passing the three information about a probe into growing “Kahanism” in the police force, which comes under the purview of far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. According to Aleph’s lawyers, the leaked information also relates to material from the Shin Bet’s October 7 probes that has not been made public.

Reports Tuesday night said he allegedly conveyed two documents and intended to pass on a third, and that he also intended to contact three more journalists.

Kahanism is the ideology espoused by extreme-right leader rabbi Meir Kahane, a former Knesset member who headed the banned ultranationalist group Kach before his death at the hands of an assassin in New York in 1990.

Ben Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party is seen as a successor to the proscribed racist Kach party founded by Kahane, though Ben Gvir has claimed to have moderated his views.

Outraged coalition members said the investigation was further proof that Shin Bet chief Bar must not remain in his post, with some ministers claiming it was more evidence of an alleged “deep state” — including Bar and Baharav-Miara — working to oust the government. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet voted last month to fire Bar and began the process of seeking to fire Baharav-Miara. The High Court of Justice has temporarily frozen Bar’s dismissal.

In a statement posted to X, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party said that under Bar and Baharav-Miara, the Shin Bet “arrests and interrogates journalists, blackmails a police officer with threats,........

© The Times of Israel