Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee (FADC) Chairman Boaz Bismuth on Wednesday sent a letter to Shin Bet Director David Zini, apparently seeking his intervention against the High Court of Justice and possibly also in the upcoming Knesset elections.
Bismuth hinted that his request was based on the High Court’s recent interim order to freeze the election of Michael Rabello as the next comptroller following allegations of tampering with secret ballot rules.
The FADC chair implied that the High Court’s intervention to probe the impact of the tampering in the secret ballot vote for comptroller could somehow lead to its intervening in the Knesset elections, though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been elected the premier six times with no judicial interference, even including the court paving the way for him to run once while under indictment for alleged corruption.
In addition, while polls are often wrong, most over the past several months have shown the opposition bloc leading the government bloc by some three to six seats – without any intervention.
Although Zini has not expressed any public interest in such issues, critics of the Shin Bet chief, who believe he is too close to Netanyahu, have warned that he could try to interject himself into the elections on the prime minister’s behalf – meaning that the opposition fear election interference from the government and its supporters.
Shin Bet acknowledged receiving the letter, yet to respond
Early indications are that the Shin Bet will not publicly reply to Bismuth in the near future, though it acknowledged receiving the letter.
At press time, the court spokesperson had not yet responded.
Curiously enough, Bismuth mixed the request regarding the courts and general elections with a separate, more standard request for updates from Zini on what the agency was doing to protect elections from external social media influence and potential hacking.
This is an issue viewed as authentic by virtually all cyber experts – which every Shin Bet chief has warned about for the last multiple rounds of elections – and which has become a feature of election security in Western countries since Russia tried to influence the US presidential election in 2016 (top security officials have said that Donald Trump would likely have won regardless of Russian interference).
However, there is no apparent connection between Russian, Iranian, and other countries’ attempts to intervene in elections using cyber attacks and influence – which, cyber experts have said, have failed consistently to date – and the state comptroller election.