Shin Bet Chief Minister Nadav Argaman today claimed that the organization he heads has thwarted hundreds of significant attacks since the beginning of the year.
Argaman arrived this morning at the Unmanned Systems Conference, UVID 2019, which is taking place at Israel Defense's initiative and reviewed developments presented at the conference.
"We are a people's organization," Argaman said, "and with technology we try to bring out the best in the world."
The Shin Bet chief stressed that there is constant ambition that there be synergy within the organization as well as with the entire Israeli security system.
"This is what allows us to maintain our qualitative advantage over challenging rivals," he explained. "This is what allowed us to thwart over 450 significant attacks in the past year."
"We try to watch Israeli citizens so they can quietly live their day-to-day lives," Argaman clarified. "Israeli technology and industry are always close to our hearts. We buy Israeli technologies before anything else. Innovation and startups are part of what we are."
A year ago, in November 2018, the Shin Bet chief provided a security review to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, warning of a false sense of security.
"The reality is very complex. We can say that on the surface we observe relative calm, but we must emphasize that this is on the surface - Hamas is trying with all its might to carry out terrorist attacks from Judea and Samaria with guidance from the Gaza Strip, Turkey and Lebanon."
"We have succeeded in thwarting 480 attacks in the last year, from which we have arrested about 500 individual terrorists," said the head of the Shin Bet security service, adding that "This is a very large amount that can attest to what is happening under the surface. In addition, we succeeded last year in thwarting cyber activity - terror and spying - against the state of Israel.”
Also in March, 2017, Argaman warned a Knesset committee of a sense of false security and claimed to have "prevented more than 400 terror attacks".
