New Head for Israel’s Shin Bet

Israel has appointed a new head of its internal security, thus winding up the coincidental sweeping rotation of the tops of nearly all of its security arms over the past few months. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu named Yoram Cohen, a former deputy of the Israel Security Agency, popularly known as the Shin Bet, to take over from long-time head Yuval Diskin. Cohen had previously been in charge of counter-espionage and the prevention of Iranian and Arab spies from penetrating Israel. He spent 2009 in the U.S. at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Since December, Israel has changed the head of the Defense Forces, the foreign-intelligence agency Mossad, the police and prison service. Cohen is the only member of the secretive Shin Bet, Israel’s equivalent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, whose identity is public.