In their ongoing conflagration over when they will part ways, it seems more and more clear that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Shin Bet Director Ronen Bar are both telling at least part of the truth.
This is most clear regarding October 7.
Both officials, like pretty much everyone else, believed Hamas was deterred and could be contained and were completely blindsided by the scope and scale of the Gazan terror group’s invasion of southern Israel.
Due to that misconception, when Bar pressed Netanyahu before October 7 at certain points to approve the assassinations of Gaza chiefs Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif, the prime minister worried it would rock the boat too much.
Nowhere does Netanyahu specifically deny Bar’s specific allegations on this.
The convenient half
But when Netanyahu pressed Bar before October 7 to assassinate then-Hamas deputy chief Salah al-Arouri during his travels between Qatar, Turkey, Lebanon, and elsewhere, the Shin Bet chief balked.
Nowhere does Bar specifically deny Netanyahu’s specific allegations on this.
Given the opportunity to respond on these issues by The Jerusalem Post, both sides went silent.
The providing half of the story – the half that is convenient – is likely a metaphor for other issues as well.
Bar has emphasized that on October 7 at 5:15 a.m., he told his chief of staff to inform the PMO of potential additional dangers (still nothing like the massive invasion that was coming) from Gaza overnight.
But he left out of his affidavit that his chief of staff did not call the PMO officials until 6:13 a.m.
Likewise, Netanyahu has pretended that Bar made no effort at all to inform him and his staff, conveniently leaving out the 6:13 a.m. call until a mix of Bar’s 5:15 a.m. and other media reports flagged that his own staff knew something was up before 6:29 a.m. and decided not to tell him.
That means that it was not Bar’s fault, or it was partially also Netanyahu’s staff’s fault.
Incidentally, former IDF chief Herzi Halevi has taken Netanyahu’s then-military secretary Avi Gil to task for not going public himself with all of this information or discussing the timeline publicly.
After the October 7 disparate narratives, it gets hazier.
Netanyahu, in the end, did not really deny the heart of Bar’s domestic issues allegations: that the prime minister pressed him to take action regarding certain anti-government protesters.
Rather, Netanyahu tried to paint those allegations in a different light, noting a few times when either protesters or someone else got close enough to strike one of his houses and saying that it was justified for the Shin Bet to get involved because the police were not protecting him well enough from violent protesters. The problem with this picture is that the protesters who shot fireworks at Netanyahu’s house were criminally probed.
And it seems that Netanyahu’s inquiries about tracking protesters were wider than the small number among them who were crossing the line into violence.
Also, Netanyahu does not deny that he told Bar he should heed his orders over the High Court of Justice, but he somewhat sidesteps the issue, saying Bar did not bring documentary proof of the allegation.
Finally, Netanyahu’s arguments against Bar regarding his trial are likely the least convincing.
If Netanyahu had stuck to the story that he did not ask Bar to try to delay the trial indefinitely due to security issues and only asked him to make sure the location of the testimony was safe, he might have an argument since that was in fact what happened. And in court until now (we will see what happens next month when he gets cross-examined), he seems to have relished being in court to tell his side of the story at most times.
But for Netanyahu to argue he did not try to delay his trial is disingenuous.
The prime minister filed around half a dozen motions to delay his trial publicly and, in fact, succeeded in delaying his testimony for several months.
So when he argues that he neither tried to delay his trial nor tried to get Bar to help him to do that, the one inconsistency could undermine both arguments.
Potential good in the battle
After all of that, the fact is that Bar will probably quit sometime in the coming weeks.
This entire fight would have been unnecessary if Netanyahu had not jumped the gun to fire him or if Bar had declared from the outset a specific set date when he would leave.
The half of the story that each is telling some of the time is not going to convince the portions of the public on one side or the other, and the only good that might come from this battle might be if a new system of checks and balances is set up for Bar’s successor to both maintain his independence along with the prime minister’s faith in his security chief.
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