Netanyahu denies reports of Egyptian warning before Oct. 7, blames ex-Shin Bet chief for not alerting him on eve of massacre

Amid a series of reports that he received warnings from Arab partners ahead of the October 7, 2023, Hamas invasion of southern Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu firmly denies that any warning from Egypt reached him, and blames the Shin Bet chief at the time for not passing on crucial intelligence.

“In the months leading up to October 7, Prime Minister Netanyahu did not meet or speak with Abbas Kamel, who was then head of Egypt’s General Intelligence Service, and no Israeli intelligence official conveyed an Egyptian warning to the prime minister,” he writes on X, after both The Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic reported that Kamel delivered warnings to Israeli officials, including a phone call to Netanyahu himself.

Netanyahu says that he will be filing a libel lawsuit, but doesn’t specify against whom. His office has threatened a number of outlets and journalists with lawsuits over unfavorable coverage it claims is libelous.

He adds that he never meets with foreign intelligence chiefs without the presence of their Israeli counterparts.

Netanyahu claims that “the left-wing media” is waging a campaign “to pin all of [former Shin Bet director] Ronen Bar’s failures and crimes on the eve of October 7 on Prime Minister Netanyahu.”

He says that on the night before October 7, Bar, then-IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi and IDF Military Intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva “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 and IDF forces in the field, not to evacuate the Nova festival—and instead only to send a small [elite counterterrorist] Tequila team (which proves that he knew there was a real danger),” Netanyahu continues.

He says that Arab countries are among the “foreign and hostile states and actors” that aim to bring down his government and replace it with a government led by Gadi Eisenkot, Yair Golan, and Avigdor Liberman, “which would withdraw from Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Judea and Samaria—and establish a Palestinian state.”

“That is the election question: it is either the right, or Palestine,” he insists.