Well, there’s an appointment that didn’t age well.
Roughly 24 hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that former Navy commander V.-adm. (ret.) Eli Sharvit would succeed Ronen Bar as head of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), Netanyahu abruptly pulled the nomination.
The prime minister’s announcement rescinding the nomination can be summed up like this: “Thanks, Eli, you’re a patriotic guy, but I’ve had second thoughts.”
And what were those second thoughts? What changed in a single day?
Netanyahu offered no explanation, but the circumstantial evidence is telling. Sharvit, as a private citizen, signed an open letter to the judiciary soon after Netanyahu’s government came into power, calling on it to remain vigilant. He also participated in demonstrations in 2023 against the government’s judicial overhaul plan.
He wasn’t a leader at the protests, was not a speaker, nor did he carry any inflammatory signs – he merely showed up to demonstrate.
That, apparently, was too much for some inside Netanyahu’s coalition. Likud MK Tally Gotliv slammed the nomination, asking him in a widely circulated video whether there were no candidates from the Right who could fill the position. And Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu (Otzma Yehudit) said nothing is gained by replacing one Shin Bet head having a “Kaplanist” worldview—a reference to the anti-Netanyahu protest movement – with someone else with similar views.
So what did Netanyahu do in the face of this type of criticism? Did he stand by his nominee, someone whom he characterized just a day earlier as the “right person to lead the Shin Bet on a path that will continue its proud tradition?”
No, he buckled and backtracked – a troubling step on several levels.
First, it reveals a deeply flawed selection and vetting process. Appointing the head of one of Israel’s most critical security organizations is no trifling matter – not something that can be done in a haphazard manner. Did the Prime Minister’s Office not do its due diligence? Were his previous political statements and affiliations unknown? Did the office not examine Sharvit’s record in full?
Then came the spin. Just hours after the appointment and “buyer’s remorse” began seeping in, sources close to the prime minister told reporters that Washington had voiced concern over an op-ed Sharvit, the CEO of an alternative energy company, had written in the Calcalist financial daily. In that piece, he sharply criticized US President Donald Trump for his energy policies. Washington, the reporters were told, was unhappy with the appointment.
Put aside whether the US should have any say in Israel’s choice of internal security chief. And ignore the improbability that US officials even noticed this op-ed, unless someone in Jerusalem flagged it for them. Isn’t this article precisely the sort of thing that someone should have caught, given Israel’s close ties to Trump?
More fundamentally, if Netanyahu truly believed Sharvit was the best candidate – that the country’s security would be well served by his leadership – then backing down under political pressure is deeply troubling. The Shin Bet chief is a civil servant, not a politician. He shouldn’t have to pass a political purity test to serve.
The opposition, too, did itself no favors in the way it handled the whole saga. Yisrael Beytenu’s head, Avigdor Liberman, reflexively slammed it. Yair Golan, head of the Democrats, praised Sharvit in his first reaction, reversing course two hours later and going after Netanyahu for firing Bar in the first place.
“A person being investigated,” he said in reference to Netanyahu and the Qatargate affair, “does not fire the investigator.”
This all is symptomatic of a larger problem: the opposition is so blinded by antipathy toward Netanyahu that no matter what he does or who he appoints – even if the country’s interests are genuinely served – they will reflexively and vehemently oppose it.
Small-bore politics
The manner in which Sharvit was nominated and then had his nomination rescinded speaks to a government consumed by short-term politics. It sends a message that even the most sensitive and vital appointments are subject to small-bore politics and ideological litmus tests. And it reveals a troubling breakdown in the functioning of the Prime Minister’s Office – an institutional dysfunctionality only underscored by the unfolding Qatargate scandal.
At a time when Israel faces complex security challenges and growing regional uncertainty, such disarray in the PMO is more than regrettable – it is reckless.
