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The Netanyahu family on vacation in the Golan Heights, in 2019
“Revenge, a political scent” versus “no threats at all”: the Netanyahu family’s security storm
(Photo: Meshi Ben Ami)
Shlomo Hernoi, former head of the GSS ‘personal security division, explained in a conversation with Ynet that the cost of security for the Netanyahu family privately will be about NIS 600,000 a month. My assessment is even very conservative, “he said.” This is expensive security, and it includes close-knit security guards and other security guards who are called ‘precursors’. Security also includes a vehicle, usually protected and a security guard driver for each member of the family. It is a matter of close security and armed security guards who accompany the family members everywhere. ”
Hernoy notes that so far the Netanyahu family members have been secured by security guards from the “Defensive Unit”, the unit for securing personalities in the Prime Minister’s Office. He said, “These are state security guards, highly trained and armed. This is their profession. A protective unit is a unit responsible for securing personalities that the Ministerial Committee on GSS Affairs decides are not GSS secure – but they are secure.”
He emphasizes that he does not know of a case in which the family of a former prime minister rented private security, but says that if the Netanyahu family is interested in it, there are substitutes for security guards in the private market. “In the private market there are companies that deal with personal security, private companies that can provide this service. But it is expensive mainly because of the cost of the security guards’ salaries. Holding security guards at such a level costs quite a bit.”
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Shlomo Hernoi, former head of the GSS ‘Personal Security Division. “Private security will cost NIS 600,000 – and this is a conservative estimate”
Security Adviser Roni Sudai, a former police security officer who also served as a threatened officer, explains that the definition of the security basket for the prime minister’s family is derived from the level of threat. “It can be a minor investment like patrols of a mobile near the house, and it can reach a very wide investment of hundreds of thousands of shekels a month,” he says.
Sudai claims that it will be difficult for private security companies to define the level of threat and adapt the security to the Netanyahu family, because they do not have the means to understand the level of risk. “Whoever determines whether these threats are real and whether it is necessary to prepare for these threats is the security of the personal unit. When it determines that there is a threat, it determines to what level. Depending on the intensity and type of threat, a security basket is given. “We collect all the information about the object of security and know how to respond to it according to the level of the threat.”
He said, “Assuming the Netanyahu family decides to take private security, things are not done formally or in accordance with state policy. Once the state has determined there is no threat, no one can determine otherwise. A private security company has no official data because the company is not exposed to that data. “A criminal is differentiated from a security company and wants to be guarded. It’s about the same weight.”
The decision to cancel the security: a report in the Ynet studio
(Photo: Shahar Goldstein)
Sudai adds that if the Netanyahu family does turn to the private market, the company it will turn to will meet expectations to determine the level of security: “It could amount to security guards armed with crews every few hours. A security guard in a private company and a security guard A personal security guard is different and then the costs are different and it is a little lower. Prices vary according to the family’s request. It can reach one hundred shekels per hour on average for the security guard “It can amount to several hundred thousand shekels.”
As a threatened police officer, Sudai says he too has not encountered a case where the former prime minister’s family has hired private security. “When someone is a symbol of rule, they will continue to be secure all their lives. The family will not be secure. If and when it is decided that they do not fall into the category of threatened, they are not entitled to security. “Those who are trying to harm the family of a former prime minister will no doubt carry out a situation assessment and provide the necessary security measures.”
The GSS Ministerial Committee, it will be recalled, announced yesterday after announcing the rejection of Netanyahu’s request to extend security for his family members that the decision was made in accordance with the opinion of “all security officials.” Sources present at the hearing said: “The Magen unit said there was no specific threat. In light of the noise created, they said that consideration should be given to gradually lowering security to the public. “
Netanyahu before the committee discussion: “Do not abandon the security of my wife and children”
Netanyahu’s entourage sharply attacked the decision, which they called “politically, scandalous and irresponsible and pre-sewn.” According to sources in Netanyahu’s environment, the removal of security “allows the blood of the former Israeli prime minister’s wife and sons. The hatred for Netanyahu makes people think they are willing to risk the lives of his wife and sons. Unimaginable. An unparalleled scandal, the writing on the wall.”
The committee, it will be recalled, decided as early as last July to shorten the security period for members of the Netanyahu family from one year to six months, but Netanyahu called on it to change this decision because of threats that he says his family continues to receive. The same decision in July was a change to a previous decision of the committee from January this year, when Netanyahu was still prime minister and the committee was headed by the then Minister of Intelligence Eli Cohen of the Likud. The initial decision for a full year was then made contrary to the recommendation of the State Committee for the Approval of Security Procedures for High-Level Persons – which even then recommended extending security for only six months.
This morning, journalist Bnei Zipper, who has been known for many years as a close friend of the Netanyahu couple, was interviewed by the Ynet studio. He said that he had talked to Sarah Netanyahu in recent days and said that she felt “a mixture of things. It is both a fear, a disappointment and a kind of frustration about the general attitude to this matter – and I fully understand it.”
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Benny Zipper. “I do not know what the considerations are, but it smells of revenge”
(Photo: Shaul Golan)
Like Netanyahu himself who argued for political considerations in the decision, Zipper also said that “the story smells bad.” He admitted that he did not know what the GSS’s considerations were, but added: “This is what it looks like. “Their considerations may be relevant, but it smells like revenge.”
Alongside him, the lawyer and social activist Gonen Ben Yitzhak, one of the founders of the “Crime Minister” movement, was also interviewed in the morning studio. Ben Yitzhak said that the issue should not refer to “people’s feelings”, but to the recommendations of the defense establishment. According to him, behind the request for an extension of security is “a pig’s desire to continue to receive free transportation from place to place, which they have been accustomed to for many years, in a way that is unacceptable.”
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Activist Gonen Ben Yitzhak. “Pig’s desire to continue to receive free transportation from place to place”
(Photo: Moti Kimhi )
He added: “There has never been a situation where the Prime Minister’s children have been getting free shuttles from place to place for so long. Even the children of the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, even after the assassination, did not receive this thing and here this family decided that everything was due to them, even after they finished their job. They produce dramas that do not exist. “
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