TV: PM held security meeting days after Oct. 7 attack without a stenographer present

Four days after the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, terror onslaught in southern Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a meeting with top security officials to discuss striking Hezbollah’s leadership without including a stenographer or otherwise recording it, according to Channel 13 news.

The TV report says the meeting included then defense minister Yoav Gallant, then IDF chief of staff Herzi Halevi, other security officials and MKs Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot of the National Unity party, who joined the government following the Hamas attack before resigning in 2024 due to differences over the direction of the war.

The network reports that Eisenkot, a former IDF chief of staff, objected to the lack of stenographer or use of recording equipment, saying that in over two decades of attending cabinet deliberations “I have never sat in a meeting of this type.”

“That is what bothers you?” Netanyahu was said to reply.

Eisenkot then reportedly said “a serious security meeting cannot be conducted like this,” at which point Netanyahu’s chief of staff Tzachi Braverman invited the stenographer into the room to start recording the proceedings.

Netanyahu’s office pushes back on the report.

“No planned meeting was called for the date cited in the report. A spontaneous security consultation was held after Gantz, Eisenkot and others came to the prime minister. When the consultation developed, the stenographer was invited to document. The claim as if there was a cabinet meeting is a lie,” the Prime Minister’s Office says,