Netanyahu claims defense officials intentionally failed to wake him in the hours before Oct. 7 attack

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims during an Instagram livestream that senior IDF and defense officials deliberately chose not to wake him hours before Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught because “they knew that, as prime minister of Israel, I would have immediately given the order to put the entire military on alert.”

The remarks, broadcast on Channel 12 news, are similar to comments he made on a podcast yesterday and on Channel 14 on Sunday night, and mark a shift from Netanyahu’s previous claim that events would have unfolded differently had he been woken up before the attack began, with the premier now alleging that defense officials intentionally kept him uninformed. In the Channel 14 interview, he elaborated that the defense chiefs chose not to wake him because they assessed Hamas would not attack, feared he would order a major alert, and were worried that this would trigger a Hamas attack.

Netanyahu says in the Instagram livestream that he would have “woken up all the communities, woken up all the security coordinators and told the air force to be ready to strike and kill anyone approaching the fence.”

“So I am not telling you that some wouldn’t have breached [the fence],” he says, adding that he could have also canceled the Nova music festival. “It is so obvious that all of this could have been done.”

Netanyahu made similar remarks on a podcast yesterday, in a clip he later reposted to his X account, alleging that senior defense officials deliberately did not wake him before the attack.

He singled out then-Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, accusing Bar of seeking to maintain a discreet, mid-level state of readiness and avoid broad military action for fear of provoking an escalation with Hamas. Netanyahu claimed defense officials did not alert him because they knew he would mobilize the military and order the air force to strike anyone approaching the Gaza border.

שאלתם: למה לא העירו אותי ב-7 באוקטובר >> pic.twitter.com/3EnyY4Xeea

— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) August 31, 2026

On Sunday, he had told Channel 14 at some length that Israel’s security chiefs, dismissive of indications that Hamas was about to attack, chose not to wake him in the hours before the attack because they feared he would order a major alert and actually prompt a Hamas attack.

“On that night” of October 6-7, “there was an assessment [by Israel’s military and security chiefs] that ‘we generals, heads of the security establishment, we are responsible people. And these politicians, including the prime minister, are laymen. They were elected? So what. We know how to act responsibly. And acting responsibly requires preventing a situation of miscalculation. And how would there be a miscalculation? If, heaven forbid, we wake the prime minister, he’ll say, Wake up the whole IDF immediately. Scramble the air force. Nobody should cross that fence; maybe some will cross, but it doesn’t matter. This [prime ministerial alert] could cause Hamas to attack us.’ If you think I’m exaggerating, wait and see,” saying that when the protocols of that night are published, he will be vindicated.

He went on: “You asked me what would have happened if they had woken me? This [October 7 invasion] would not have taken place.”

“I’m not telling you that nothing would have happened. [Hamas] had prepared it,” he continued, blaming the failure in part on the security establishment’s prewar “conception” that Hamas was deterred, which he sought to distance himself from.

“There was never any underestimation [on my part]… As for [Hamas’s] desire to destroy us, [to underestimate] that is such a disconnect from reality,” Netanyahu said.

His comments came after his wife, Sara Netanyahu, peddled a conspiracy theory targeting Democrats party leader Yair Golan, insinuating without evidence in an interview aired yesterday that Golan had advance notice of the onslaught. Golan has said he will sue her for libel if she does not apologize. She has refused.

Channel 12’s political correspondent says these appear to be deliberate moves by the Netanyahu family to reframe the narrative surrounding the failures of October 7, ahead of the upcoming elections.

In February this year, Netanyahu released a 55-page document with select quotations from cabinet meetings in the years leading up to October 7, which painted a picture in which the premier ostensibly pushed for aggressive policies against Hamas, while his current political rivals and security chiefs urged long-term deals with the terror group and blocked the assassinations of its leaders.

That document omitted the protocols of an October 1, 2023, meeting at which Netanyahu reportedly instructed his top advisers and security chiefs to maintain the status quo that saw the terror group receive economic incentives to maintain quiet.

“The prime minister expressed great appreciation to all the security services on their activities to maintain the quiet on all fronts,” read the leaked summary from the protocol of that meeting, reported by Channel 12, “with an emphasis on the holidays, and stresses that we must act with moderation in order to cool down the fronts and avoid escalation…”

In the meeting, according to the network, the security chiefs recommended that Israel move toward assassinating Hamas leaders. However, Netanyahu conditioned any such operations on conflict breaking out, and even then instructed the defense establishment to focus on the West Bank leadership.

In his 2022 memoir, Bibi, Netanyahu wrote that Hamas was sufficiently constrained and that he didn’t want to wage all-out war in Gaza when he was more concerned about Iran, Time magazine noted. “Did I really want to tie down the IDF in Gaza for years when we had to deal with Iran and a possible Syrian front?” he wrote. “The answer was categorically no. I had bigger fish to fry.”

Netanyahu’s office acknowledged in March 2025 that the premier’s intelligence officer received an Israel Defense Forces memo detailing suspicious Hamas activity three hours before the terror group’s October 7, 2023, invasion and onslaught, and didn’t pass it on. The premier’s office argued that this was justified given what it said was the document’s non-urgent framing.

In an affidavit to the High Court in April 2025, then Shin Bet chief Bar wrote that 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.” Bar added that, at 5:15 a.m., “alongside various directives, I instructed that the Prime Minister’s military secretary be updated.”

Bar added: “I say this with pain – no one anticipated an attack of this scale, certainly not on that morning. The update to the Prime Minister was part of a series of directives I gave at the conclusion of that meeting, and it was delivered immediately, as part of the continuous chain of command from the moment I was alerted during the night until the end of that discussion.”

Netanyahu has for three years resisted a state commission of inquiry into the failures surrounding the Hamas invasion and massacre.