Former NSC head pans Netanyahu’s ‘crooked’ flydubai probe, says buck stops with him

The former head of Israel’s National Security Council, Eyal Hulata, accused the government on Monday of trying to cover up its own security failures after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tapped the current head of the NSC to lead the investigation into the security failures behind last week’s attempted terror attack aboard flydubai Flight 1073.

The Prime Minister’s Office announced on Sunday that NSC head Shmuel Ben Ezra would be responsible for appointing an examiner to conduct a thorough review of “all aspects” of the security arrangements for foreign civilian flights to Israel, after the Omani copilot aboard a flydubai flight to Tel Aviv last week stabbed the captain and allegedly sought to crash the plane with its 180 passengers and crew.

Netanyahu ordered the probe amid mounting scrutiny of Israel’s oversight of foreign airlines, including reports that senior Israeli bodies had warned for years that the Transportation Ministry was failing to carry out adequate security checks on foreign flights.

But Hulata, speaking to Army Radio on Monday, charged that a probe led by Ben Ezra would be nothing more than a cover-up, given that the NSC is the body responsible for preventing situations like the flydubai attack by coordinating with the relevant bodies, which in this case include the Transportation Ministry, the Shin Bet, and the Mossad.

“In my opinion, the NSC is one of the bodies that needs to be investigated here,” said Hulata, who served as the head of the security body from 2021 to 2023.

Describing the failings as “multi-system dysfunction,” he suggested that by appointing the NSC to head the probe rather than designating it as a body to be investigated, Netanyahu was seeking to avoid scrutiny of his decision-making process.

“There is a ritual here. The prime minister tells the National Security Council chairman to appoint a review panel and basically pushes the issue away from his decision-making process as the head of the pyramid and from the NSC as his staff.”

There is something crooked in the way this whole thing is being dealt with,” Hulata added.

He noted that the NSC issued warnings in 2024 and 2025 that the agencies that were supposed to deal with security over foreign airlines — “in particular the Transportation Ministry and possibly the Shin Bet” — were not doing their job properly.

“The moment the prime minister or the NSC on his behalf issues a warning — what happens now? Who takes responsibility now to ensure that these things are dealt with?” asked Hulata.

“The person who bears responsibility is the prime minister. That’s what he’s the prime minister for,” asserted the former NSC chief, answering his own question. “If a minister or a ministry or an agency isn’t doing what they need to, it is his job to ensure that these things happen and to use his total authority — it should not be understood any other way — to do what is needed so that the government functions for the good of the citizens.”

Hulata further asserted that by appointing the NSC to probe the affair, Netanyahu was displaying the same evasion of responsibility that he has shown since the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre.

“It’s the same outlook,” he said of the prime minister’s behavior in both instances, three years apart.

Netanyahu has refused to allow for a state commission of inquiry into the failures surrounding the massacre, and has insisted on his own innocence while pointing fingers at security chiefs.

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid also drew comparisons between October 7 and the attempted flydubai terror attack, calling the premier’s probe into the latter affair a “sham.”

“A chain of failures leading up to the incident could have resulted in a disaster of historic proportions, and this is how the prime minister of Israel responds?” the Yesh Atid chair demanded on X. “Just as Netanyahu evaded an inquiry into the October 7 massacre, he is evading responsibility now.”

Ofer Winter, the head of the new right-wing People of Israel party, also accused the government of shirking its responsibility to properly probe the incident.

Speaking near Ben Gurion Airport on the national day of remembrance for the October 7 massacre, Winter declares that “three years after the horrific massacre, it seems that the State of Israel refuses to learn the lesson.”

Like opposition leaders in recent days, Winter — who nevertheless backs Netanyahu — drew a direct line between the Hamas-led 2023 attacks and the flydubai incident, arguing that in both cases civilians were forced to avert disaster in the wake of state incompetence while political leadership deflects blame.

“This is what the ‘conception’ looks like, and unfortunately it is still very much alive and well, no matter what they tell you. Anyone who doesn’t want to investigate won’t want to fix things either,” he said. “Anyone who doesn’t take responsibility won’t provide a solution.”

Winter casts himself as the answer, reiterating his ambition to serve as defense minister — seemingly under Netanyahu — and pledging a new security doctrine that includes “knocking our enemies’ heads down before they raise them” and ensuring that combat soldiers “always come before enemy civilians and before any other extraneous consideration.”