https://apnews.com/f7849e8d4ee839fd9b1fbd59a2c4baa6

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel's former police chief said Wednesday that recent allegations about police using sophisticated spyware to hack the phones of prominent officials and protesters have “no bearing on reality.”

The remarks by Roni Alsheikh, who was head of the national police force during some of the alleged snooping, followed reports this week in a local business newspaper that police illegally used the NSO Group's spyware Pegasus on the phones of former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s son and others, prompting a high-level investigation and upending the opposition leader’s corruption trial.