PM told IDF to stop recording discussions at military HQ in first days of war – report

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered that security consultation and cabinet discussions held in the underground operations center of military headquarters in the first days of the war were not recorded, Haaretz reports.

The outlet says the Israel Defense Forces complied with the premier’s directive to stop the automatic recording equipment in the days following October 7.

The report says the order from the Prime Minister’s Office was received by the office of Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, which in turn transferred the directive to the Operations Directorate of the military.

Haaretz says that Netanyahu preferred to hold discussions in his own office at the defense headquarters in Tel Aviv so that he was not reliant on military recordings.

In response, the PMO tells Haaretz that “in accordance with the provisions of the regulations for the work of the government, all government meetings and ministerial committees have recordings and transcriptions made by the Prime Minister’s Office stenographers only.”

Last week, two other Hebrew media outlets suggested Netanyahu has been attempting to leave his conversations regarding the management of the war in Gaza untraceable.

According to the Ynet news site, senior figures in the security establishment fear that efforts are being made to edit the minutes of wartime discussions held with Netanyahu after discovering discrepancies between transcripts of the meetings and what the figures had heard in real time.

Officials from the Prime Minister’s Office reportedly approached Netanyahu’s former military secretary, Maj. Gen. Avi Gil, to warn him that people from the premier’s inner circle were attempting to tinker with the meeting records. The report said one of the meetings, whose records were tampered with, dealt with “sensitive preparations for a significant political event,” but it did not elaborate further.

Gil later sent a letter to Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara expressing his concerns on the matter.

Senior political sources told Ynet they could not be assured that the audio was recorded for meetings held at Netanyahu’s offices in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, the Kan public broadcaster reported that Netanyahu has been holding sensitive discussions on the war via phone calls on the WhatsApp app, which does not allow conversations to be recorded.