Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (right), present certificates of excellence to the officers of the Shin Bet security agency in July 2017. Photo: Kobi Gideon/GPO.

JNS.org – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday praised Israel’s Shin Bet (ISA) security agency for thwarting more than 70 planned terror operations against soldiers and civilians in the Jewish state during the months of July and August.

Netanyahu expressed “deep gratitude” to the Shin Bet’s personnel “and to all those involved in this important work on behalf of the security of Israel.”

The prime minister’s comments follow mid-August reports that the Shin Bet had exposed a complex money-transferring scheme run by the Gaza-ruling Palestinian terror group Hamas, whose operatives in Gaza used the network to send funds to families of Palestinian terrorists residing in eastern Jerusalem.

Earlier that month, the Shin Bet also announced that it had uncovered an intricate money-laundering scheme run by Hamas, in which some $200,000 was illegally transferred to the terror group from Turkey.

Further, the IDF and Shin Bet together arrested 29 Hamas members in July after a Palestinian terrorist fatally stabbed an Israeli father and two of his adult children in the Samaria community of Halamish. Several of the arrests included some of the terror group’s senior officials based in the disputed territories.