The director of Israel’s internal intelligence agency, Shin Bet, has alleged that Benjamin Netanyahu fired him for refusing to pledge his loyalty to the prime minister over the courts and use the agency to spy on anti-government protesters.
The battle between Netanyahu and Ronen Bar, the head of Shin Bet, has pushed Israel to the brink of a constitutional crisis, after the supreme court blocked a decision by the cabinet to dismiss Bar from his post – the first Shin Bet head to be fired.
Bar had alleged that the decision to fire him was driven by Netanyahu’s “personal interests”. On Monday, Bar submitted an 31-page affidavit to the supreme court, which halted his firing last month. The affidavit detailed his version of the events that led to the breakdown of his relationship with Netanyahu and his dismissal. Some sections relating to national security were kept classified.
-Guardian
Israel’s far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir was set to address a meeting at Yale University, a day after being honored at a lavish dinner at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
Ben-Gvir, who has past convictions for supporting terrorism and was considered persona non grata under the Biden administration, attended a fundraising event at the Florida resort on Tuesday, where he told attendees about harsh new measures implemented against Palestinian prisoners…..Ben-Gvir was convicted in 2007 of racist incitement and support for groups on terrorism blacklists. For years, he prominently displayed a photo in his living room of Baruch Goldstein, who massacred 29 Muslim worshippers in Hebron in 1994.
In 2022, the Biden administration condemned Ben-Gvir’s visit to the memorial of violently racist and anti-Palestinian rabbi Meir Kahane, whom the national security minister was a follower of in his youth.
-Guardian
Legal permanent residents are being targeted too. Mohumoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate is currently detained and facing deportation because the Administration objected to his pro-Palestinian activism on campus. A current Columbia student Yunsco Chung, who has lived in the U.S. since she was seven, was also identified for deportation and had to sue the Administration to get a federal judge to temporarily block it. Last week, Mohen Mahadawi, a senior at the university and a student activist, was arrested by ICE when he showed up for his citizenship interview, he had held a green card for a decade.
-New Yorker