Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent APN's views and policy positions.
Q: Pegasus is the name of a nearly undetectable cellphone spyware program sold by the Israeli company NSO to authoritarian regimes that abused it. This blackened Israel’s name internationally. Now we hear that the Israel Police used it on Israelis
A: That is what the financial daily Calcalist revealed a couple of weeks ago. Its reporter, Tomer Gonen, claimed that NSO had sold a customized version of Pegasus to the Israel Police and that the latter had abused the spyware to snoop on more than two dozen Israeli officials, journalists, protestors against Netanyahu, the latter’s own son, and others. It was alleged that this was all done either without a warrant from a judge or in violation of the warrant. Former police commissioner Roni Alsheikh, who served from 2015 to 2018, was implicated.
Calcalist’s revelations were at first denied entirely by the police and by Public Security Minister Omer Barlev. Then it was grudgingly admitted that the police indeed possess Pegasus. Then the public was informed that a witness in the Netanyahu trial, former Communications Ministry director general Shlomo Filber, had indeed been targeted with Pegasus. By this time the Israel Police had lost credibility with 80 percent of the public. And a variety of officials were calling for a national commission of inquiry into police abuse of power and its ramifications and into a dynamic and prosperous cyber community run wild.
The Israeli media was having a field-day. Covid-19 and Ukraine were pushed off the front page. Comparisons to the worst banana republics blossomed. Basic freedoms had been violated. The public’s earlier reaction of indifference and even pride regarding reports of abuse of NSO’s Pegasus by authoritarian regimes in Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan (‘everybody does it, only we do it better’) now yielded to horror at possible invasion of our own cellphones. Few commentators bothered to caution that all allegations were based on a single journalist and his anonymous source somewhere in the police or the Ministry of Justice.
Then the police revealed its own investigation, backed by Alsheikh and Barlev. Mossad and Shin Bet experts were recruited to consult. Latest reports allege that only three mayors suspected of corruption and one Netanyahu aide had been targets of the Pegasus spyware. In all cases, a proper warrant had been obtained. Little or no useful evidence had been obtained. Alsheikh is threatening to sue for defamation.
Yet the calls for a proper objective inquiry persisted, if only to clear the air and restore the public’s faith in the institutions of the rule of law. It is possible that laws were broken by the very police who were charged with enforcing them. Notably, Israel’s laws regarding wiretapping and the intercepting of phone calls date back to 1979, when the fax was the last word in communications technology.
On Monday, the respectable Haaretz daily still led with shock headlines like “Netanyahu Trial: Prosecution Says Witnesses’ Phones Were Hacked With Warrant” and “Former Israeli Police Chief: We Don’t Have Pegasus, ‘Someone Will Pay’ for Reports”
Q: Yet another national commission of inquiry?
A: The Bennett government, barely eight months in office, has already established two such commissions: to investigate the scandal of submarine acquisitions from Germany and to investigate the Mt. Meron disaster where 45 ultra-Orthodox celebrants were killed in a stampede. Both of these scandals occurred during the 12-year tenure of Benjamin Netanyahu and were widely understood to reflect disastrous flaws in his style of governance. Hence his reluctance, while still prime minister, to appoint commissions of inquiry and his inclination to appoint non-confrontational regulatory officials. The Pegasus scandal--if indeed there is one--also occurred largely under Netanyahu.
For his part, the former prime minister has gone on the offensive. Netanyahu has claimed all along that the corruption charges against him that are currently being aired in a Jerusalem courtroom stem from a conspiracy on the part of the legal and police establishment to frame him. Now he points to the 26 names on the original Calcalist list, some of whom are linked to him, as proof.
So does Netanyahu now want an independent inquiry? Only, he stipulates, if the terms of reference and identity of the ‘inquirers’ are cleared with the parliamentary opposition--meaning Netanyahu himself. If there is a commission of inquiry, that highly suspect stipulation will be ignored: the chief justice of the Supreme Court will appoint commission members and the government will determine its mandate.
Lest we forget, it was Netanyahu himself who appointed Alsheikh as police commissioner, bringing him over from the Shin Bet with a mandate to modernize Israel Police tech capabilities. Now Netanyahu’s blind followers are tweeting that “Alsheikh heads a criminal syndicate”.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s trial has been delayed pending more information on police spying, if it happened, on witnesses. Bennett, like Netanyahu, is clearly asking himself how this latest scandal can be managed to his benefit and to the detriment of his political opponents.
Q: We have learned that NSO peddled various versions of Pegasus spyware both globally and locally. The FBI tested a version. There are allegations that the Mossad is using it (at home? abroad?) What does this say about Israel’s vaunted high-tech sector, the ‘engine’ of the Israeli economy?
A: According to (outgoing) NSO CEO Shalev Hulio, he understood from the outset that a tech tool like Pegasus could only be exported with permission from the Ministry of Defense. The ministry treated Pegasus like any other ‘weapon’, e.g., guns and radars. You can only sell it to a sovereign country. But you are not responsible for the use that country makes of your product.
So if NSO sold Pegasus to Morocco, just as Israeli arms manufacturers are selling guns to Morocco, it is not responsible for the fact that the Moroccan security community turned Pegasus not only against drug dealers and terrorists, but against President Macron of France as well, planting it in his personal cellphone.
Moreover, according to Hulio, in some cases NSO did not have to recruit foreign state customers for Pegasus. Israeli security agencies recruited the customers, to whom they offered Pegasus as a bonus in return for enhanced relations with Israel. Indeed, then-PM Netanyahu himself reputedly ‘delivered’ Pegasus to countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East in return for improved relations. When you tell an authoritarian ruler, ‘Recognize Israel, do business with Israel, and we’ll give you something that will enhance your security’, you know exactly what aspect of that ruler’s security interests him: what his political enemies are up to.
(Needless to say it is ironic that Netanyahu, who once peddled Pegasus to paranoid foreign dictators, is now paranoid about its possible use against him on the home anti-corruption front.)
No wonder the US Commerce Department late last year blacklisted NSO (and a second Israeli spyware producer, Candiru), accusing the companies of providing spyware to foreign governments that "used these tools to maliciously target" journalists, embassy workers and activists.
Q: Is there a bottom line here of ramifications for Israeli society?
A: Israel’s flourishing high-tech sector is to a large extent galvanized by alumni of the security establishment, which has cultivated world-class cyber capabilities. The NSO-Pegasus scandal must be seen as a warning signal that in Israel’s intimate security-commercial-government community, matters can all too easily get out of hand, with ramifications for Israel’s global profile and for the rule of law at home.
When spyware is so easily and mindlessly marketed to abusers abroad, and when the Israel Police can so easily spy on fellow Israelis (whether or not they actually did), we have to ask whether the high-tech and security establishments are sufficiently aware of the importance of the rule of law and of foundational societal values, at home and abroad. We have just been informed by the Ministry of Education that testing of high school students in literature, history and the humanities is being downgraded in favor of the physical sciences. Is that wise?
The Pegasus scandal also seems to reflect badly on the quality of journalism in Israel. Yes, there is a free press. But when the journalistic efforts of a single reporter for a single business daily can uncritically captivate the entire political establishment; when, even for a week or two, allegations of mass police spying on citizens are accepted at face value by fellow journalists, without invoking their own critical faculties and assets--when these phenomena transpire, then it is time for some soul-searching regarding the influence of social media and the internet on societal values and on the nature of journalism.
Then too, the notion of one government setting up endless commissions of inquiry to investigate the alleged misdeeds of its predecessor suggests to many Israelis a disquieting precedent.
At the time of writing on Monday, it was impossible to tell where this scandal would take us. It could die in another week if the Israel Police suddenly prove credible. It could go on for months while a proper legally-sanctioned inquiry takes place. It could contribute to Netanyahu’s demise or his return to government. It could bolster the Bennett-Lapid government and contribute to its survival, or the opposite.
Meanwhile, the Israeli public is both titillated by the revelations . . . and worried.