Since the election results came in and the Arab parties secured an unprecedented victory, Israeli media have been reporting almost daily on new details of the dispute between David Zini, chief of Israel’s domestic security agency, the Shin Bet, the attorney general, the police and the Central Elections Committee over the legality and integrity of the results.Among the revelations: Zini demanded, without even minimal evidence, that the leaders of the Arab parties and parliamentary aides be investigated. He reportedly told the attorney general, “Let the investigation take place, and then there will be reasonable suspicion.” He also submitted an opinion to the Central Elections Committee claiming that there was information about “foreign funding activity on a massive scale, involving thousands of people and possibly even more.” And he refused to hand over to the police and the State Attorney’s Office evidence that ostensibly supports his allegations, claiming that doing so would expose an intelligence source.Zini’s conduct has been portrayed as stemming either from his role as a political pawn in Netanyahu’s campaign to annul the election and undermine public confidence in its results, from his far-right and racist ideology, or from his complete lack of professional qualifications for the job. All three explanations are true.The problem is that, for many in Israel’s media and among the public, Zini is seen as a desecrator of the Shin Bet’s sacred ground, and his conduct as an aberration. They ignore, knowingly or otherwise, the fact that these are the agency’s longstanding, routine methods when dealing with Palestinians in the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem. These methods include:Detaining Palestinians for interrogation or a “conversation,” and establishing “reasonable suspicion” only afterward, including through threats, torture and denial of access to a lawyer; Preparing vague or terse opinions based on intelligence sources that judges have no way of verifying, to justify administrative detention; Securing indictments on the basis of confessions extracted under coercion, or testimony from collaborators who receive benefits in return or who have themselves been detained, threatened and tortured before implicating others; And relying on the fact that, given pretrial detention, the physical and psychological scars left by Shin Bet interrogations, and the very real prospect of conviction on serious charges carrying draconian prison sentences, Palestinian defendants rarely refuse plea deals and insist on a full trial that could expose flaws in the agency’s conduct.The person most prominently portraying Zini’s conduct as exceptional is Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara. On November 8, for example, she said in an address to Justice Ministry employees – one she clearly knew would be reported in the media – that there was no “evidentiary basis that could, even remotely, affect the election results or substantiate a claim of influence that could lead to a change in the election results… So far, I have been presented with preliminary evidence concerning only a few isolated and limited incidents… If additional new information that has not yet been presented is submitted, it will be examined and handled in accordance with the law. Where there is an evidentiary basis, those who need to be investigated will be investigated.”Yet, in her official capacity, she knows perfectly well that Zini’s conduct is not exceptional when measured against the Shin Bet’s methods. Like all her predecessors, she provides legal cover for the agency’s methods and defends them in court when Palestinians are concerned. It therefore seems that Zini was telling the truth when he responded to her: “You authorized Shin Bet interrogations on the basis of less suspicion than this.”The only truly exceptional aspect of Zini’s conduct is his attempt to apply, within Israel itself and in the wake of the election results, the Shin Bet’s methods of interrogating Palestinians and implicating them in crimes in the occupied territories.The media and public reaction to Zini’s departure from these established “boundaries” is hardly surprising. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the media and the public protested Israel’s use of Shin Bet surveillance systems to track people infected with the virus. But there was no comparable outcry over the use of those same systems against Palestinians. Even now, it is doubtful that Zini’s actions against the Arab parties would have attracted much media or public attention had the parties not achieved such an impressive electoral result. Had the opposition bloc secured 61 of the Knesset’s 120 seats without them, Zini could probably have carried out his schemes against Arab members of the Knesset without provoking any serious controversy.As long as most of Israel’s media and Jewish citizens refuse to question the sanctity of the Shin Bet and its methods, the agency will remain a potential threat to everyone’s human and civil rights — and to the possibility of maintaining a genuinely democratic system in Israel.Eitay Mack is an Israeli lawyer and human rights activist.