Ex-Shin Bet chief files defamation suit against Netanyahu, details warnings months before Oct. 7

Former Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar filed a defamation suit against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday for NIS 3 million ($970,000) over statements the premier made last month alleging that Bar knew about the threat of a Hamas attack on the night of October 7, 2023, but chose not to inform him.

In his defamation suit, Bar detailed the steps he and the Shin Bet took in the early hours of October 7 to update the Military Secretariat of the Prime Minister’s Office, which he said was the body responsible for communications between the premier and the security services.

He also laid out at length a series of warnings he said he’s made to Netanyahu in the months leading up to the October 7 attack, in which he said that Hamas saw the societal unrest over the divisive government’s judicial overhaul agenda as a sign of weakness and that the likelihood of war was intensifying.

Bar said his claims were supported by written documents which he will seek to have released to prove his case in court.

On September 28, Netanyahu wrote on X that “The left-wing media is waging a vicious and deceitful campaign aimed at pinning all of Ronen Bar’s failures and crimes in the lead-up to October 7 on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”

He said that in the early hours of October 7, Bar “held numerous conversations with then-IDF chief of staff Herzi Halevi and military intelligence chief Aharon Haliva, during which they discussed all the warning signs. Despite this, Ronen Bar decided not to call and update the prime minister, not to alert the civilian security squads or IDF forces on the ground, not to evacuate the Nova music festival — and instead to dispatch only a small Tequila team (which proves he knew there was a real threat).”

Netanyahu has often pinned blame for the disaster on the security establishment and its failure to anticipate and prevent the attack. This, despite numerous reports that he downplayed security chiefs’ repeated warnings of an emboldened Hamas and a growing danger posed by Israel’s enemies in the months leading up to the massacre, and ignored their calls to take a far harsher stance toward Hamas, including eliminating its top leaders.

Bar said on Wednesday that his lawsuit “completely demolishes the prime minister’s assertions and sheds light on an extraordinary series of warnings of an impending disaster, recommendations and operational plans that I presented on dozens of occasions, all of which were met with disregard by Netanyahu. The statement of claim clearly outlines the prime minister’s responsibility for the policy of containment, maintaining calm and financing Hamas’s military buildup.”

He added that “the campaign of incitement launched by the prime minister about a year and a half ago, and which is now being intensified, is intended not only to shield him from responsibility but also to target those who worked to rid his office of individuals acting on behalf of the Hamas-supporting Qatari government and to prevent the Shin Bet from being turned into a ‘secret police’ force serving those in power.”

Over 5,000 Palestinian terrorists, mostly from Hamas, invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, by land, air, and sea, at multiple points on the Israel-Gaza border, and carried out a series of massacres in which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage. It was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.

Netanyahu has refused to appoint a state commission of inquiry to investigate the failures behind the worst ever invasion of Israel by enemy forces.

In his defamation suit, Bar gave a timeline of steps he and the Shin Bet took in the early hours of October 7, and outlined the broader series of warnings he said he issued in the months preceding the attack.

Bar stated that from 11 p.m. onwards on October 6, Shin Bet officials updated their IDF counterparts about developments in Gaza, and that at 2 a.m. the head of Shin Bet operations decided to scramble the agency’s Tequila counter-terrorism combat unit. (This action came in anticipation of a possible limited attack, and proved entirely insufficient in light of the major assault that would follow.)

Shin Bet officials issued an electronic alert to “relevant officials” about possible signs of offensive action by Hamas at 3:03 a.m., Bar said, although he admitted that the warning should have been of a higher level.

“It is important to emphasize that in real time, no one, including the Shin Bet, estimated that Hamas was heading toward an all-out attack,” Bar’s defamation suit stated.

Bar said he then directed the Tequila unit to the northern Gaza border between 5 and 6 a.m., and gave instructions to pass the principal points of a situational assessment to Netanyahu’s military secretary at the same time.

He also noted that the intelligence officer of the prime minister’s military secretariat received updates from the Shin Bet throughout the night, including a phone call at 3:55 a.m.
The officer did not, however, wake Netanyahu’s military secretary Maj. Gen. (ret.) Avi Gil.

Bar said that at his instruction, his chief of staff held a situational assessment with Gil by phone at 6:15 a.m., but that during a subsequent call between Gil and the IDF chief of staff’s bureau chief, Hamas began its assault.

Bar asserted that this sequence of events demonstrated that the Shin Bet had updated in real time the prime minister’s military secretariat, an agency he said was responsible for communications between the security services and the prime minister.

“Although the defendant is fully aware of all the above… he chose… to level a particularly grave and malicious, yet baseless, accusation against the plaintiff, portraying him as a ‘criminal’ who knowingly chose to withhold information from the defendant and the security agencies,” asserted Bar.

Bar also said that Netanyahu had never given him his personal phone number “unlike previous prime ministers,” and insisted that the communication channel between the Shin Bet and the prime minister was the prime minister’s military secretariat.

A long list of warnings

The former intelligence chief also detailed a long list of warnings he said he’d issued to Netanyahu in the months leading up to the October 7 attack.

Bar said that he warned Netanyahu in a meeting on March 7 that Hamas was pleased with internal divisions in Israel that erupted over the government’s judicial overhaul agenda, and that the situation could lead to a war with the terror group.

Starting in January 2023, the coalition pursued a series of radical and controversial reforms to Israel’s judicial and legal system, which opponents said would undermine Israel as a democracy. This led to unprecedented large-scale protests against the government, strike action, and threats by reservists not to do military duty.

In a working meeting on March 22, Bar said he told Netanyahu that there had been a threefold increase in terror warnings over those in the previous year, and that Hamas had essentially become “a military wing of Iran.”

The lawsuit says that because Bar felt his warnings were not being heeded, he spoke with then defense minister Yoav Gallant during the course of March about the rising security threat, leading to Gallant’s speech on March 25 calling for a halt to the judicial overhaul legislation, which the defense minister himself said was endangering the country’s security.

Netanyahu briefly fired Gallant on March 26, apparently because of his public opposition to the contentious legal reforms, but subsequently reinstated him due to massive protests that erupted as a result, which became known as “Gallant night.”

Bar also noted that Netanyahu told the pro-government Channel 14 news station on April 13 of the warnings he had been issued of a growing risk of war: “I think the claim is exaggerated.”

The former Shin Bet chief further underlined a conversation he held with Netanyahu on a secure line on July 23, in which he said “I am passing you a strategic warning for war,” adding that Israel’s enemies viewed the internal political divisions in Israel as an opportunity, and that the only way to prevent it was a preemptive strike.

Bar said that because of the multi-front threat, targeted killings and preparations for war in Gaza were recommended in a situation assessment on July 26. He said that he again recommended offensive action on August 20 in another situational assessment.

In a working meeting on August 21, Bar said he underlined a “dramatic escalation” in the “directing of attacks from the Gaza Strip,” and said he made clear that “without offensive activity in Gaza, it would not be possible to change the reality.”

And during a security cabinet meeting on August 22, Bar said he told the ministers that Hamas “was not deterred,” partly due to the divisions within Israeli society that it viewed as weakening the Jewish state.

Bar said, however, that Netanyahu gave instructions for “calm” during a ministerial meeting on September 10, and that there should be as calm a period as possible during the coming Jewish High Holiday season. He said the discussion quickly switched to dealing with the protests held at the time against government politicians.

Bar added that on September 14, 2023, “an unusual message was received from the enemy” and that he updated Netanyahu about it, although he did not expand on what the message was. He said further that in discussions on the issue on September 17, he warned of “a vector of conflict,” and said there was an immediate need to strengthen deterrence.

The Shin Bet recommended preemptive action against Hamas in a paper given to Netanyahu on September 21, although Bar noted that the recommendation was for an attack after the holiday season “because of the defendant’s instructions to keep the holiday season quiet.”

In a security hearing on September 27, Bar said Netanyahu made clear that he did not want an escalation with Gaza and gave instructions that force be used “judiciously.”

And on October 1, Bar said he warned of a peak in the intentions of terror groups to carry out attacks, and that Israel would be dragged into a round of fighting against its will before the end of the holiday period. He recommended targeted assassinations of key terror leaders.

Bar said Netanyahu approved advancing plans for the recommended assassinations but that the prime minister did not act to carry them out and did not request a meeting on them.

“At the same time, the defendant made clear that the pursuit of a diplomatic agreement, which was under consideration at the time, was a paramount objective, and instructed that efforts be made to maintain security calm on all fronts,” the lawsuit stated.

Negotiations between the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel were underway before the October 7 attack, for Riyadh to normalize relations with Jerusalem.

The desire to derail such an agreement was a key driving factor in the decision by Hamas’s Gaza chief and October 7 architect Yahya Sinwar to stage the terror assault.

Netanyahu fired back at Bar after he filed the defamation suit, stating that Bar “[who] saw the warning signs on the night of October 7 and didn’t call me, is saying today that he didn’t have my phone number.”

“Ronen, are you serious? You had my secure phone number, and you could have immediately called me, as all heads of the security establishment do,” Netanyahu said, adding that he could also have reached him through his Shin Bet security detail.

“How many lives could we have saved if only you had called in time,” Netanyahu said.

Lazar Berman contributed to this report