by Leonid Tsukanov
[REGNUM] High-profile reshuffles continue in Israel's top offices. Ido Norden, an experienced bureaucrat and economist, took over as chief of staff in Benjamin Netanyahu's office in April. He effectively became the prime minister's right-hand man, seizing control from the disgraced Ziv Agmon, who was dismissed after making racist remarks.
However, before Norden had even had time to settle into his position, scandal after scandal began to rain down on him. Unlike his predecessor, he was clearly unprepared for these scandals.
THE CRISIS OF THE OFFICE
By April 2026, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office was not in the best shape.
One after another, the most experienced political strategists and managers left. Some did so on their own initiative due to transfers to other positions, while others were suspended by court order. Others managed to quarrel with their boss and leave under pressure. As a result, by early spring, every other position in the chancery was vacant.
This has hampered the executive body's operational work and has also hit Netanyahu's personal ratings.
Recent polls conducted by the newspaper Maariv have revealed that a question has taken root in the public consciousness: if a politician is incapable of reining in even his own staff, how can he be trusted to govern the country?
The gossip intensified especially after the scandal involving the prime minister's former confidant, PR man and chief of staff Ziv Agmon, whose careless statements exacerbated relations between the country's religious communities.
After Agmon's departure, Netanyahu had to rebuild his own apparatus almost manually, and Ido Norden became one of the people tasked with breathing new life into the paralyzed structure.
EQUIDISTANT PLAYER
Unlike his predecessor, who rose to the highest ranks almost by accident, Norden's tenure in the Prime Minister's Office marks his second stint. Prior to that, from 2006 to 2008, he served in Ehud Olmert's administration, where he served as senior adviser to the Chief of Staff.
Moreover, during his career, he managed to work at the Central Bank and the innovation sector, change several ministries and agencies, including the Supreme Command Headquarters, and also work in public affairs. However, in all these cases, he tended to maintain a relatively low profile, never publicly aspiring to either ministerial portfolios or senior public positions.
At the same time, he had every opportunity to confidently ascend, not least due to his authority in religious circles. Norden is the son-in-law of Rabbi Yosef Kalner, the spiritual authority of the ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) movement and one of the most respected religious figures in the Jewish community.
It was Kellner who introduced his new relative to leading Jewish intellectuals and conservative politicians, gently introducing him to the hawkish community. Later, at one of their receptions, Norden met Prime Minister Netanyahu. The latter, however, did not see much potential in his interlocutor at the time.
Beyond his family connections, Norden also had considerable personal political capital: during his years of public service, he developed contacts among both hawks and moderate politicians. And during Israel's difficult times, he managed, unlike many others, to maintain a relative balance between the Haredi and secular circles.
While other Israeli religious intellectuals rushed to the barricades, Norden preferred to bridge the gap between the opposing sides, remaining largely in the shadows. And thanks to this, he was able to remain "welcome" to both sides.
In many ways, it was Norden's equidistance from the main centers of power that prompted Netanyahu to choose him when approving candidates for the post of Chief of Staff, a key position within the Prime Minister's Office. Here, the Prime Minister was forced to make a compromise with himself and sideline his aide, Nevo Katz —a more manageable but less stable figure.
With this unconventional reshuffle, Netanyahu apparently hoped to at least temporarily calm passions within the chancellery—including buying time to appoint a permanent press secretary (for now, this task remains in Norden’s portfolio).
NETWORK CLONES
However, Netanyahu's hopes for a calm transfer period were dashed. Just days after Norden's appointment to the top post, the chancery was rocked by scandal—and the newly appointed head found himself at the center of it.
On one social network, numerous clones of Norden's official account and Israeli spiritual authorities suddenly became active, vying with each other to praise the new chief of staff and predicting a "new golden era" of development and growth for the Jewish state.
Some of them even resorted to seditious behavior—criticizing Prime Minister Netanyahu's stance, calling him a "weak leader" who "doesn't listen to religious authorities." In contrast, Norden received only positive ratings from the bots and was positioned as practically the savior of the fatherland.
Although most of these accounts were created in the early 2020s, they remained undetected for a long time. Now, in light of their sharp increase in activity, journalists have conducted an investigation.
It was established that the network helped promote publications related to the new Chancellery chief, with leads leading either to Norden himself or to individuals close to him. Norden, of course, denies any connection to the bots, calling the incident an "image attack" staged by Netanyahu's opponents on the eve of the elections.
However, the clone scandal has become more of an excuse for the public to recall Norden's previous escapades. For example, to study his book, "Invisible Rulers," published in 2024, in which the official veers into outright conspiracy theories and blames the "deep state" for all the recent failures and setbacks of the ruling apparatus, elevating its "subversive activities" to the level of an existential threat to Israel.
Norden also happily plays into criticism of the Jewish state's security agencies. He compares the Shin Bet counterintelligence agency to Iran's IRGC (hinting, among other things, at its "pronounced repressive nature"), and the scandal surrounding the Qatari lobby (the so-called "Qatargate"), which cost the careers of some of Netanyahu's associates, to being "artificially inflated" to salvage the army's reputation after its failures in the war with Hamas.
It's no surprise that the very next day after the first reports about the "Norden Grid" appeared, Israeli social media was flooded with previously forgotten, controversial quotes from "Invisible Rulers." Opinions began to circulate that the "equidistant administrator" wasn't so equidistant after all, and that Haredi lobbyists had secretly infiltrated the highest echelons of power.
And although Netanyahu's supporters insist that Norden the writer and Norden the manager are two completely different figures, and that "personal views on individual issues" will not affect his effectiveness as head of the chancery, the flywheel of the scandal continues to spin.
Moreover, both secular liberals and security forces are digging into the politician with equal zeal. The new head of the chancery's name is barely mentioned in the debates, but the attacks directed at him are easily read between the lines.
It's noteworthy that the prime minister has yet to officially comment on the scandal surrounding his new aide. Netanyahu doesn't want to draw further attention to the issue, and he's clearly hoping to brush it under the rug—to avoid having to look for another chancery chief. This is already the third one in the past year.