Even for a country accustomed to and notorious for frequent, vociferous political scandals that would rock other countries' foundations, Thursday's comments about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by the previous head of the Shin Bet security service are a bombshell rare in their potential explosiveness and audacity.
"Without democracy we have nothing. … If Netanyahu breaks the law, I will come out and tell everything I know about him," Nadav Argaman said on Israel's Channel 12 News.
Argaman, with a proven track record of opposing Netanyahu's "strengthen Hamas" policy between 2014-2023, has spoken out before, but never like this – implicitly threatening a sitting prime minister.
An agitated, shaken and riled Netanyahu immediately responded. "I am being extorted under threats by the current head [Ronen Bar] and previous head of the Shin Bet. … These Mafia-like criminal threats will not deter me," Netanyahu said in a statement, not specifying what he is being extorted over or what exactly it would not deter him from doing.
That is quite the accusation, bordering on alleging blackmail by a former director and insubordination by the current one – J. Edgar Hoover-style in the best case and treason in the worst.
He went further on Friday, filing a complaint against Argaman with the police commissioner. In it, he accused the former Shin Bet chief of extortion, undermining the rule of law and government, and disclosing secret information.
Shin Bet security service Director Ronen Bar.Credit: Chaim Goldberg/Flash 90
Also Friday, 151 former heads of the Mossad, Shin Bet, department heads in both organizations and dozens of former IDF generals and officers signed a letter of support for Bar, whom Netanyahu sees as a political nemesis and badly wants to fire.
Within a few short days, Israel will doubtless smoothly transition on to a new scandal. But the magnitude of Argaman's thinly veiled threat is hard to exaggerate.
Its uniqueness centers on the fact that it applies to a series of issues converging around Netanyahu: his trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust; the constitutional coup that he instigated 15 months ago and is now forcefully pushing; and the acrimonious relationship he's had with the Shin Bet ever since the calamity of the October 7 massacre. This has led to poisonous attacks on Bar, including over the initial Hamas attack and investigations into the Prime Minister's Office.
All prime ministers (and presidents) are paranoid to some degree. In most cases, you don't get to be leader unless you combine paranoia and megalomania. Those two qualities are then exacerbated on the job. Netanyahu is not unique in this, but he may be an extreme example of what happens when you acutely overdose on both.
In Netanyahu's eyes, everyone is out to get him. A left-wing "deep state," judicial system and media cabal is persecuting him out of blatant jealously and ingratitude.
In this context, Argaman's threat fit perfectly into Netanyahu's perpetual victim narrative: The elites always hated him and, through successive heads of the Mossad and Shin Bet, put out a political contract on him. He has been framed on criminal charges, and then failed by the security service before October 7 in order to conceal their abject failure in anticipating the Hamas attack. Since then, the Shin Bet – as well as the IDF's top brass – incited the public against him by tacitly pressing for his resignation.
Nadav Argaman shaking hands with then-Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in 2021.
For him, that is unthinkable. Netanyahu sees himself as the lord protector and savior of Israel. A combination of Louis XIV's "l'état, c'est moi" and Jesus, who "suffered for our sins," in the eyes of his cult followers. And along comes an insolent Ronen Bar, and then his co-conspirator Nadav Argaman, making threats.
Netanyahu's approach of all-out war against his own country has its antecedents in the constitutional coup he launched in January 2023 – a hasty attempt to transition Israel from liberal democracy to an illiberal, quasi-authoritarian electoral democracy like Hungary and Turkey. The prime minister and his acolytes adorably and disarmingly called it a "judicial reform," which is tantamount to calling an armed robbery a "financial rearrangement."
Both the Shin Bet and the IDF warned of the consequences and how it erodes Israel's perceived power, which only fortified Netanyahu's notion that Israel's security bodies are mutinous.
After the murderous Hamas attack in October 2023 and the 15-month Gaza war that followed, a devastated Israeli public was not only agonizing and grief-stricken. It also became desensitized to Netanyahu's political and legal theatrics and transgressions, almost indifferent to his and his minions' vitriolic attacks on Bar, the (just-departed) IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzl Halevi and Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, whom Netanyahu already commenced a motion to oust.
Israeli Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara.Credit: David Bachar
Yet Argaman's warning came at dangerous moment for Netanyahu: the confluence of the deliberate impasse he created on the second stage of the hostage release deal with Hamas; his crude, evasive maneuvers on the mandatory legal drafting of young Haredi men; his ongoing corruption trial; and his daily threats to fire both Baharav-Miara and Bar – the final two effective guardrails against his authoritarian power grab.
This explains the timing of Argaman's interview, but it also leaves some fundamental questions open.
What exactly does Argaman know about Netanyahu that is so incriminating or damning that he thinks it would work as an effective deterrent? If what he knows is allegedly criminal or directly pertains to national security, why did he not investigate it when he was Shin Bet chief, or at the very least come out and divulge it once he left his position in October 2021? If what he knows is relevant to Netanyahu's trial, wasn't he obliged to share it with the prosecution or the court?
If the information is of a personal nature, than it is likely irrelevant gossip and cannot be a deterrent against someone like Netanyahu, whose demeanor, ethical and moral codes are well known – so why threaten him?
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in court for his corruption trial earlier this month.Credit: Hadas Parush
What is Argaman's threshold for Netanyahu's illegal actions that would trigger him to speak out? If Netanyahu calls it extortion, by definition he is being extorted specifically – so why hasn't he said what it is? And if this really is "criminal extortion," why hasn't Argaman already been questioned by the police for allegedly blackmailing an incumbent prime minister on live television?
This could all go away in a matter of days, precisely because Israelis have been desensitized and another scandal will arrive to dominate their brief attention spans. But in terms of precedence and scale, something like this has never happened before in Israel.