Agents of the Shin Bet security service have developed a particularly thick skin over the years. The Shin Bet generally ignores human rights activists who accuse it of torturing Palestinian detainees or issues a laconic denial, at most. Shin Bet usually does the same whenever a radical right-wing Jewish group accuses it of using outlawed methods to interrogate Jewish suspects.

On Jan. 6, however, the Shin Bet deviated from its practice, as it reacted to the right-wing outcry against the detention of five Jewish minors suspected of causing the death of Aisha Rabi, a Palestinian mother of eight from the West Bank village of Biddya. Rabi and her husband were attacked by a group of settlers who threw stones at their car. In a statement about the detention, the Shin Bet lashed out at the “deliberate and continuing effort by interested elements to denigrate the organization and its employees and delegitimize its activities.” Taking an unusually harsh tone, the organization said it conducts all its counterterrorism activity in accordance with the law and values of the state and it expects “condemnation” of those who malign it.

This should send shock waves through the country as this is not some one-off incident. It is a distress call by a key security agency tasked with protecting the State of Israel from a subversive organization that does not recognize the country’s laws and rules. According to official data, Israeli West Bank settlers and right-wing activists carried out 482 documented attacks against Palestinians in 2018 (up to mid-December), more than three times the 2017 figure. These include throwing stones, damaging homes and cars, cutting down trees and spraying graffiti. Israeli human rights activists operating in the West Bank claim this information is not complete because many incidents of harassment by thugs from Israeli outposts go unreported given Palestinian mistrust of the Israeli Police.

These very same assailants and their supporters are now crying foul at the arrest of several Israeli teens suspected of complicity in the rock throwing that killed Rabi. They are the ones to whom the Shin Bet was referring in demanding that its critics be condemned. Obviously, the organization expected that its direct boss, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, would rush to its defense. However, it took Netanyahu two days to issue a half-hearted defense of the organization — and then only because he had no choice in light of its success in hunting down and killing a wanted Palestinian terrorist.