After years working as a senior agent in the Shin Bet (Israeli Security Agency), attorney Gonen Ben-Itzhak has become an outspoken activist in several protest movements, mostly against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government.
In a recent interview with Gilad Morag on the Maariv podcast, he revealed, among other things, that he foiled an assassination plot against Netanyahu.
After his time in the Shin Bet, Ben-Itzhak transitioned to practicing law, representing social activists after they were arrested or imprisoned. He has also been personally active in many anti-government protest movements.
"A protest activist I represent comes to me and says another activist has spoken in very practical, concrete terms about harming the prime minister. I didn't know who she was. Maybe if I had, then maybe some of the decision-making would have been different," Ben-Itzhak said.
"So I said, 'Listen, when you say something like that, then the lawyer-client relationship doesn't exist, because if I, as a lawyer, know about an intention to harm someone, and it's the prime minister, it won't stay with me. I can't do that. The law obliges me, and morality obliges me to do so.'"
Ben-Itzhak contacted the Shin Bet, who interrogated and arrested the activist, who he later found out was struggling with her health at the time. He described the situation as a "tragedy" in retrospect.
However, at the time, he determined that "Israeli democracy cannot handle the assassination of a prime minister. Netanyahu, Rabin, or whatever they call him; there won't be another assassination of a prime minister. This is beyond the pale, and the State of Israel can't handle it again."
Working with the 'Green Prince'
During the Second Intifada, Ben-Itzhak worked with the "Green Prince," Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of Hassan Yousef, a leader and founder of Hamas in the West Bank in the 1980s.
"Mosab essentially grew up as Hamas aristocracy," Ben-Itzhak explained. "But, over time, cracks formed - cracks large enough for the Shin Bet to break through and recruit him."
Ben-Itzhak was a Shin Bet coordinator in the Ramallah district and arrived on the job after Yousef had already been contacted and recruited.
"I always say I jumped on the bandwagon of success," he said, adding that most of the work Yousef did with the Shin Bet during that time is strictly confidential and, naturally, cannot be discussed on a radio interview. "We can talk about some of it, though," he said, "because [Yousef] wrote about them in his book, Son of Hamas."
Although unable to say exactly how many lives Yousef saved through his work with the Shin Bet, Ben-Itzhak emphasized that the Son of Hamas author "acted out of a higher calling...to save human lives."
The money Yousef received, Ben-Itzhak added, was not the main motive. "It's not money...he truly is a very special, charming person."
After working at the highest levels of Israeli intelligence for so many years, Ben-Itzhak told Maariv that he is shocked by the state of Israeli intelligence in light of the failures on October 7.
"It's very difficult for me to understand how the entire system can collapse," he said. "Both the IDF and the Shin Bet... Everything is collapsing. It's truly inconceivable."
"Think about what happened on the other side of the border, in Gaza, in the 24 hours before October 7," Ben-Itzhak added. "It isn't that [Yahya] Sinwar does such and such, and people jump. Hamas is organizing, people are leaving their homes, some are going down into tunnels, preparing vehicles at meeting points."
"This is a planned thing. A source with one eye could tell you 'something bad is happening.'"
He did, however, admit that finding such a source in Gaza would be much more complicated than finding one like the "Green Prince" in the West Bank.
"You have to understand," he said, "recruiting and activating people in Gaza is a very, very difficult thing."