After years working as a senior agent within the Shin Guess (Israeli Safety Company), legal professional Gonen Ben-Itzhak has develop into an outspoken activist in a number of protest actions, largely in opposition to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s authorities.
In a latest interview with Gilad Morag on the Maariv podcast, he revealed, amongst different issues, that he foiled an assassination plot in opposition to Netanyahu.
After his time within the Shin Guess, Ben-Itzhak transitioned to working towards legislation, representing social activists after they had been arrested or imprisoned. He has additionally been personally lively in lots of anti-government protest actions.
“A protest activist I characterize involves me and says one other activist has spoken in very sensible, concrete phrases about harming the prime minister. I did not know who she was. Possibly if I had, then possibly among the decision-making would have been totally different,” Ben-Itzhak stated.
“So I stated, ‘Pay attention, while you say one thing like that, then the lawyer-client relationship would not exist, as a result of if I, as a lawyer, find out about an intention to hurt somebody, and it is the prime minister, it will not stick with me. I can not try this. The legislation obliges me, and morality obliges me to take action.'”
Ben-Itzhak contacted the Shin Guess, who interrogated and arrested the activist, who he later came upon was struggling along with her well being on the time. He described the state of affairs as a “tragedy” looking back.
Nonetheless, on the time, he decided that “Israeli democracy can’t deal with the assassination of a first-rate minister. Netanyahu, Rabin, or no matter they name him; there will not be one other assassination of a first-rate minister. That is past the pale, and the State of Israel cannot deal with it once more.”
Working with the ‘Inexperienced Prince’
Throughout the Second Intifada, Ben-Itzhak labored with the “Inexperienced Prince,” Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of Hassan Yousef, a frontrunner and founding father of Hamas within the West Financial institution within the Eighties.
“Mosab primarily grew up as Hamas aristocracy,” Ben-Itzhak defined. “However, over time, cracks shaped – cracks massive sufficient for the Shin Guess to interrupt by and recruit him.”
Ben-Itzhak was a Shin Guess coordinator within the Ramallah district and arrived on the job after Yousef had already been contacted and recruited.
“I all the time say I jumped on the bandwagon of success,” he stated, including that a lot of the work Yousef did with the Shin Guess throughout that point is strictly confidential and, naturally, can’t be mentioned on a radio interview. “We are able to discuss a few of it, although,” he stated, “as a result of [Yousef] wrote about them in his ebook, Son of Hamas.”
Though unable to say precisely what number of lives Yousef saved by his work with the Shin Guess, Ben-Itzhak emphasised that the Son of Hamas creator “acted out of a better calling…to avoid wasting human lives.”
The cash Yousef acquired, Ben-Itzhak added, was not the primary motive. “It is not cash…he really is a really particular, charming individual.”
After working on the highest ranges of Israeli intelligence for therefore a few years, Ben-Itzhak advised Maariv that he’s shocked by the state of Israeli intelligence in gentle of the failures on October 7.
“It’s totally troublesome for me to know how your entire system can collapse,” he stated. “Each the IDF and the Shin Guess… Every thing is collapsing. It is really inconceivable.”
“Take into consideration what occurred on the opposite facet of the border, in Gaza, within the 24 hours earlier than October 7,” Ben-Itzhak added. “It is not that [Yahya] Sinwar does such and such, and folks bounce. Hamas is organizing, individuals are leaving their properties, some are taking place into tunnels, getting ready automobiles at assembly factors.”
“It is a deliberate factor. A supply with one eye may let you know ‘one thing dangerous is going on.'”
He did, nevertheless, admit that discovering such a supply in Gaza can be rather more sophisticated than discovering one just like the “Inexperienced Prince” within the West Financial institution.
“You need to perceive,” he stated, “recruiting and activating individuals in Gaza is a really, very troublesome factor.”
