In court filing, Bar denies Shin Bet withheld Oct. 7 warning from PM, calls accusations ‘incitement’

Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar strongly rejects allegations by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others that the agency had advance warning of the October 7 Hamas attack and failed to alert the premier and other security services, and provides precise details of the steps he took during the evening of October 6 and the early hours of October 7.

Writing in a formal statement to the High Court of Justice regarding his dismissal by the government, Bar acknowledges failures by the Shin Bet but says the claims he failed to update the prime minister were part of “institutional incitement” against him and the Shin Bet.

As a prelude, Bar points out that the Shin Bet “strongly warned” the government that the societal divisions that erupted around the coalition’s judicial overhaul agenda in 2023 were being seen by Israel’s enemies as an opportune moment to attack, and that the agency recommended carrying out a series of “targeted attacks” to “prevent the collapse of the balance of deterrence.”

Bar also says he warned Netanyahu in July 2023 of the severity of the security situation and of a “war alert,” which he says was an irregular and unprecedented comment from a Shin Bet chief.

On the night of October 6, Bar says, after receiving “unusual but not unambiguous indications” the commander of the IDF’s Gaza Division and its intelligence unit, and the IDF’s Southern Command, were alerted by telephone of the unusual activity that had been identified at 11 p.m.

At 3:03 a.m. on October 7, all security agencies were issued an alert about “unusual preparations and the possibility of offensive intentions by Hamas,” although he said that the level of this alert was wrong and a represented a failure of the Shin Bet.

Bar says he went to the Shin Bet headquarters at 4:30 a.m., and at 5:15 gave instructions for the prime minister’s military secretary to be updated about the events.

“It is with pain that I emphasize that no one evaluated that an attack like this would erupt and certainly not on that morning,” writes Bar.

“However, the attack was ‘not coordinated by us,’ our teams were not ‘sent in order to save Shin Bet personnel,’ and on that night nothing was ‘hidden from the security establishment or the prime minister,'” insists Bar.