Netanyahu: Bar bears ‘massive and direct responsibility’ for failing to prevent Oct. 7 massacre

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accuses Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar of bearing “massive and direct responsibility” for failing to prevent the October 7 invasion and massacres by Hamas, in an affidavit to the High Court of Justice in response to Bar’s affidavit filed last week.

Bar said in his own submission that he took steps to alert the IDF and the security agencies of a heightened possibility of a Hamas attack and updated the prime minister’s military secretary at 5:15 a.m. on the morning of October 7.

But Netanyahu, in a filing to the court in the petitions against his firing of Bar, says the Shin Bet chief failed to alert him or the defense minister, and that his evaluation of the developing security situation was deficient in the extreme.

Quoting from the 5:15 a.m. evaluation which Bar sent, Netanyahu points out that Bar said that the readiness for an attack should be “medium, secret readiness in order not to create a miscalculation,” and “to avoid broad actions by us in order to avoid miscalculation given the fact that this is not a leading assumption.”

Wrote Netanyahu: “He was clinging to his erroneous perspective and prevented the carrying out of necessary actions, just out of a concern that Hamas would interpret it as readiness for war on Israel’s part, and open up a war against us,” adding that Bar had prevented Israeli defensive actions “at a time when Hamas had already opened up a war.”

The prime minister also accuses Bar of concealing this evaluation from the High Court in the affidavit he submitted last week.

“If Bar would have called on the IDF to prepare at high readiness and not ‘medium, secret,’ to send all ground and air forces to the Gaza border region, and if he would have determined not to ‘avoid broad actions,’ but rather the opposite, instruct the IDF to initiate it immediately, the massacre would have been avoided,” claims Netanyahu.

“As such, Bar bears massive and direct responsibility for failing to prevent the massacre,” alleges the prime minister.