Meir Ben Shabbat

Meir Ben Shabbat was born in 1966 in Dimona

Meir Ben Shabbat was born in 1966 in Dimona to Makhlouf and Aziza, a religious family that came to Israel from Morocco. He grew up in Dimona and studied at a state religious school and at the Bnei Akiva Ohel Shlomo yeshiva in Beer Sheva. As a young man he wrote for a local Dimona paper and other papers in the south.

He joined the IDF in 1984 and served in the Givati Brigade, where he received the Presidential Medal of Excellence. He holds a bachelor's degree in political science from Bar-Ilan University.

In 1989 he joined the Shin Bet, where he worked mainly against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. He commanded the service's activity in Operation Cast Lead and headed its cyber division and its Southern Region. In 2004 he led an operation to seize terror funds from bank accounts in Judea and Samaria.

In 2017 he became National Security Advisor and head of the National Security Council in the Prime Minister's Office. He managed ties with Egypt, took part in the Abraham Accords with the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, and was involved in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. He announced his resignation in 2021.

After leaving office he became a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies. In 2023 he became head of the Misgav Institute in Jerusalem, and he writes opinion pieces for Israel Hayom. He is married to Sigalit and lives in Merkaz Shapira.