Shin Bet chief Zini said to have changed background on all agency PCs to Temple Mount photo on first day at the job
Days after David Zini entered his post as head of the Shin Bet, the backgrounds on all computers at the agency were changed from logo of the internal security service to a photo of the Temple Mount, Channel 12 reveals.
Sources who disclosed the development to the network say it was an indicator of Zini’s plans to take the agency in a more religious messianic direction — one in line with his own religious background, as a student at the ultra-conservative Har Hamor yeshiva in Jerusalem.
Zini’s views were seen as so extremist in the past that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly refrained from appointing him as his military secretary because he was “too messianic.”
After enough Shin Bet agents pushed back on the change to the computer backgrounds, they were changed back to the agency’s logo, Channel 12 says.
Shin Bet employees were told that Zini had asked to change his own screen background to an image of the Temple Mount, and a technician accidentally changed the backgrounds for the entire agency, Channel 12 says.
This was one of a series of controversies surrounding Zini who is marking six months as head of the agency.
The network says that upon entering his role in the Shin Bet, Zini changed the agency’s priorities to downgrade the importance of combatting Jewish terror. The phenomenon was reclassified as “skirmishes.”
A former senior official in the Shin Bet reveals to Channel 12 that Zini’s own son was involved in racially-motivated attacks against Druze towns near where the family lives in the Golan Heights.
An agent from the Shin Bet department responsible for combatting Jewish terror phoned Zini shortly after he entered his post warning him that his son was a target of the agency and that he should keep an eye on him.
The agency declined Channel 12’s request for comment on the matter.
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