Tel aviv: According to leaked documents from the Pentagon, Israel's spy agency Mossad reportedly encouraged its personnel and the general public to participate in significant demonstrations against a judicial reform plan put forth by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
According to reports published on Sunday by a number of media outlets, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, the assessment was contained in a Central Intelligence Update from March 1 that was discovered among a collection of private documents from the US Department of Defense that recently surfaced online.
The assessment, as reported by the media, stated that in "early to mid-February," the top leaders of Israel's foreign intelligence service "advocated for Mossad officials and Israeli citizens to protest against the new Israeli Government's proposed judicial reforms, including several explicit calls to action that decried the Israeli Government."
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The memo was devoid of any other information, including the names of the Mossad officials who are said to have placed those calls.
On behalf of Mossad, Netanyahu's office issued a statement on Sunday rejecting the reports and denouncing the evaluation as "mendacious and completely without any foundation."
The statement read, "The Mossad and its serving senior personnel have not engaged in the demonstrations issue in any way and are dedicated to the value of service to the state that has guided the Mossad since its founding.
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According to the NYT's article, Mossad chief David Barnea did permit some of the organization's junior staff to take part in protests, but only in an unofficial capacity, according to an unnamed defence official.
Several hundred former Mossad employees, including five of its former chiefs, signed a statement opposing the judicial reform last month.
Since Netanyahu proposed legal changes in January that would give parliament the ability to override Supreme Court decisions with a simple majority, give the government more control over the selection of judges, and restrict the ability of the top court to review legislation it deems "unreasonable," hundreds of thousands of Israelis have demonstrated in the streets.
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Yoav Gallant, the defence minister, was dismissed by the PM in late March for openly opposing the change. The rift it created in society, according to Gallant, was beginning to affect the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and was turning into a "clear, immediate, and tangible danger to the security of the state."
Netanyahu caved in to pressure a few days later and put the reform on hold, claiming that it would take a few weeks to negotiate changes with the opposition.