Smotrich claims officials delayed sending troops south on Oct. 7 because they thought invasion was ‘deception’ to allow Hezbollah assault up north

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich claims in an interview with the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper that the government and the IDF delayed sending troops to southern Israel by several hours on October 7, 2023, because they thought that the Hamas invasion might be a distraction intended to draw troops away from northern Israel, leaving the border vulnerable to a simultaneous Hezbollah invasion.

He recalls that between “11 a.m. and 12 p.m.” on October 7, he sat on the phone with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former defense minister Yoav Gallant, and ex-IDF chief Herzi Halevi, debating whether or not to send forces down south, where civilians were being slaughtered by invading terrorists.

“We still didn’t know if the catastrophe in the south was just a deception created by Hamas so that we would send all the forces south, and then Hezbollah would attack us from the north,” he says. “That’s why we waited a moment, and only when intelligence arrived and we realized it wasn’t coordinated, did we send the forces south.”

He says they “weren’t aware of the scope” of the assault, in which dozens of communities were invaded and destroyed, some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — were killed, and 251 were taken hostage.

Still, he says god “did us a favor” with the October 7 attack, as it “woke us up” to the threat on the other side of the Gaza border “after many years of being asleep.”