From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
Netanyahu: Security chiefs didn’t wake me up on Oct. 7 because they feared ‘miscalculation’
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleLazar Berman is The Times of Israel's diplomatic reporter
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims that Israel’s security chiefs did not wake him up on the night of October 7, 2023, despite signs indicating a Hamas attack, because they were afraid he would cause a “miscalculation” by hitting the terror group hard.
In an interview with Channel 14, he says that the intelligence and military heads believed Hamas was carrying out a drill or preparing for a minor attack.
They saw Hamas terrorists putting Israeli SIM cards into their phones, and senior Hamas commanders heading underground, he says, but “they were locked in a conception that it was a drill, or a small thing.”
“If they had woken me up, they knew I’d have woken everybody and canceled Nova and put the air force on alert,” he goes on.
“If we wake up the prime minister, he’ll cause Hamas to attack us without meaning to,” Netanyahu asserts the security chiefs believed.
The Times of Israel Community.