Ex-Shin Bet chief sues Netanyahu for defamation

Ronen Bar, who headed the Shin Bet, Israel's domestic security service, until he resigned in June 2025, filed a defamation lawsuit on Wednesday against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He is seeking 3 million shekels, about $970 000 according to The Times of Israel. Neither outlet consulted says which court received the filing.

The suit answers Netanyahu's claim that Bar knew of the threats before Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023 attack and chose not to tell him. Bar calls the claim "particularly grave and malicious, yet baseless." He argues the prime minister lied to escape his own responsibility, according to Al Jazeera, which describes a 134-page filing.

Bar says he kept Netanyahu's military secretariat informed in real time during the night of the attack and gave the prime minister a long list of warnings in the preceding months. He says he has documents to back that up and that he did not have the prime minister's direct number.

Netanyahu replied the same Wednesday, through his Likud party, that Bar did have his secure phone and could have called him at once. He has maintained that nobody alerted him that morning. The timelines of that night are Bar's account, and the prime minister's office disputes them; neither has been independently checked.

The suit lands 13 days before the Oct. 27 election, in which Likud faces a tight race, according to Al Jazeera. Who failed on Oct. 7 is one of the campaign's themes. It is not yet known which court received the filing, or whether the case will reach a hearing, something Bar says he wants so that documents and testimony come to light.