High Court recommends Yair Golan withdraw Shin Bet protection petition

Supreme Court President Isaac Amit on Tuesday recommended that Democrats chairman Yair Golan withdraw his petition seeking an order requiring the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) to protect him ahead of the October 27 election.Amit made the recommendation during a hearing before a panel that also included Justices Ofer Grosskopf and Ruth Ronnen, after the justices heard Shin Bet representatives behind closed doors without Golan's side present.Attorney Omri Segev, representing Golan and the party, asked the state and the Shin Bet to update him on the security arrangements it could offer Golan.Amit said the issue was “significant” and that the justices “were and remain concerned” about it. He said the panel understood that the Shin Bet would guide police based on information provided by Golan's team.“We have a professional body that specializes in this matter, and we will not intervene,” Amit said, before recommending that the petition be withdrawn.Golan faces death threats, threats to familyAccording to the petition, police informed Golan's office about a month before it was filed that the threat level against him had been raised to four on a six-point scale.The Democrats said Golan's threat level was the same as that assigned to former IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot and claimed that protection had already been approved for Eisenkot. Eisenkot's party disputed that account on Tuesday, saying it had been informed that the Shin Bet currently had no intention of providing him with security, despite the position of an advisory committee. Eisenkot's team also confirmed this directly to The Jerusalem Post.The petition documents dozens of threats posted between July and late September, including calls for Golan to be shot or hanged and messages threatening members of his family.It also says Golan's name appeared in a death-threat letter attached to a brick thrown at Channel 12's studios on July 27. According to the petition, he was the only party leader named as a target in the letter.The state told the court last week that the Shin Bet had begun implementing a broader security framework for party leaders under a classified September 16 decision by the Ministerial Committee for Shin Bet Affairs. Under the arrangements, Shin Bet intelligence units monitor threats, coordinate with privately hired security teams and conduct periodic threat assessments. Party leaders may employ armed private guards, but the framework does not commit the agency to providing Golan with a direct Shin Bet protection detail.Absence of protection impaired Golan's campaignSegev said that, with three weeks remaining before the election, the absence of state protection materially impaired Golan's ability to campaign and the conduct of equal elections, because threats and security warnings had led to events involving him being changed or canceled.He argued that the Shin Bet Law requires the agency to protect Israel's democratic system and institutions and that the government had delegated to Shin Bet Director David Zini the authority to determine the security arrangements for party leaders.“Yair Golan is under threat. That is the reality we are living in. This is the 'threat from within,'” Democrats director-general Omer Lubaton Granot said, accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and those around him of conducting an incitement campaign that endangered Golan's life.“November 1995 must be a warning sign to all of us,” he said, referring to the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.Keshet Neev contributed to this report.