David Zini’s appointment will not bring about a major shift in the Shin Bet's (Israel Security Agency) spirit, ex-Shin Bet senior official Ilan Lotan said in a Wednesday interview with 103FM Radio, noting that past religious heads of the agency similarly lacked organizational familiarity.
Lotan noted that since Zini comes from the religious sector, he will "need a longer learning curve because he’s not familiar with the content and the language, and I’m not just referring to Arabic."
"At this point," he went on, "I don’t foresee any dramatic shifts where the agency suddenly changes its character or operations."
The public is eager to hear from former Shin Bet director Ronen Bar, he added.
Ronen Bar addressed several topics during his address at Tel Aviv University's Cyber Week conference last week, Lotan said, including "the need for a state commission of inquiry" and the "enormous security challenges that Israel will face in the coming decades."
"There is a need for a committee that will look at this from a national perspective," according to Lotan, explaining that while he is familiar with the details of the Shin Bet's investigations into the failures of October 7, "no one has taken the time to examine the root causes from a national and comprehensive viewpoint to ensure that October 7 does not repeat."
When asked if he thought Bar's speech was appropriate, Lotan said that he is "now a private citizen, and I think the public expects to hear from him."
"I’m not Ronen Bar’s spokesperson," he added, "but I believe that in his speech [on Tuesday] at Tel Aviv University, he acknowledged that both he and the organization he led failed in the greatest blunder in the history of the State of Israel."
"There's no dispute that the service, as an organization, and those who led it, played a significant role in the horrific events of October 7."
Attempts to involve Shin Bet in the fight against crime
Lotan further addressed the attempts to involve the Shin Bet in the fight against Arab-Israeli crime.
He explained that there are those within the agency who support the approach, arguing that allowing it to continue harms Israel's security because the weapons used could "in a future, second Operation Guardian of the Walls, be turned back on them."
However, he warned that any such actions must be taken with great caution, explaining that "If this goes ahead, I hope it happens after thorough planning, and not as a populist decision made by one party or another."