Netanyahu didn’t ask to speak with security chiefs the morning of Oct. 7 – ex-military secretary

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s military secretary on October 7, 2023 says the premier did not hold conversations with senior security officials in the first two hours of the Hamas attacks.

Netanyahu arrived at the Kirya in Tel Aviv between 8:30 – 8:45 a.m. on October 7, says Maj. Gen. (res) Avi Gil in an interview with Channel 12, two hours after Gil woke him.

In the two hours after the Hamas attack began, Gil says, Netanyahu did not ask him to get any security officials on the line.

Gil says he does not know whether Netanyahu was dysfunctional at the time. “I’m not a psychologist.”

Netanyahu met with Jonathan Urich and Eli Feldstein — two senior aides who are accused of taking money from Qatar — in the Kirya military HQ in the first days of the war, Gil says, even though they didn’t have security clearances.

Gil says he made sure they didn’t gain access to classified meetings.

He also says that he remembers an unexplained interest in alleged Egyptian violations of the peace treaty by introducing unauthorized forces into the Sinai Peninsula, though he doesn’t know whether that was part of a Qatari influence campaign, as some have claimed.