Report: Weeks before Oct. 7, Shin Bet and IDF chiefs warned Netanyahu of looming attack
TV probe says Bar and Halevi told PM, who was hospitalized after having pacemaker fitted, that Israel’s foes saw overhaul tensions as chance to strike; PM’s office: ‘Slander and lies’
While recovering in the hospital after having a pacemaker fitted in the summer of 2023, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was warned by the heads of the IDF and the Shin Bet that Israel appeared increasingly vulnerable to attack, with the country’s foes viewing the deep societal strains over the government’s judicial overhaul push as an opportune time to strike, according to an investigative television report aired Thursday.
The revelation that Shin Bet head Ronen Bar and military chief Herzi Halevi both relayed warnings to Netanyahu while he was hospitalized that July, on the eve of the final Knesset votes on the first piece of coalition legislation to curb the judiciary’s independence, was among several dramatic new details that Channel 12’s “Uvda” program reported relating to the devastating Hamas-led terror onslaught in October, which sparked the ongoing war in Gaza and related fighting throughout the region.
The TV program also cited transcripts of Netanyahu’s initial conversations with his then-military secretary minutes after Hamas launched its invasion of southern Israel on the morning of October 7, 2023, as they sought to understand the scope of the attack that would result in the worst massacre of Jews in a day since the Holocaust.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told fellow cabinet ministers during a meeting later that day that the public would be justified in demanding their resignations, the TV show revealed, and it further reported on the alleged doctoring of the transcripts by a top aide to Netanyahu.
The Prime Minister’s Office lashed out at “Uvda” and its anchor Ilana Dayan over the program, denouncing it as “slander and lies against Prime Minister Netanyahu aimed at harming the right-wing government.”
“The conscious-engineering enterprise ‘Uvda’ will continue with the propaganda and mask of lies, while Prime Minister Netanyahu will continue leading Israel to a historic victory,” the statement from the premier’s office said, while pushing back against a number of specific claims by the investigative program.
‘Strategic warning of war’
According to the report, Netanyahu was contacted by both Bar and Halevi on the evening of July 23, 2023, while he was at Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan, after undergoing surgery for a medical ailment a week earlier for which he was hospitalized and doctors later revealed was a potentially life-threatening “transient heart block.”
The cardiac scare came with political tensions at boiling point over the coalition’s plans for restricting the judiciary, which prompted mass anti-government demonstrations and led some IDF reservists to halt volunteer duty in protest while others threatened to stop reporting for mandatory reserve duty if the overhaul legislation passed.
After being connected to the premier on a secure line, the report said that Bar told Netanyahu: “I am giving you a strategic warning of war.”
“I can’t say when or how,” the Shin Bet chief was quoted as saying, but Israel’s enemies were watching what was happening inside Israel amid the rift over the judicial overhaul, “and they identify weakness.” Bar reportedly urged Netanyahu to stop the overhaul legislation. The report did not say how the prime minister reacted.
Netanyahu also received a letter while in hospital from Halevi, who had been scheduled to meet with him but could not because of the prime minister’s hospitalizaion.
“The IDF’s readiness is being rapidly hurt and recovering slowly. This is dangerous. What is happening now in Israel raises the chance that we will be attacked,” Halevi wrote, according to the report, which said the IDF chief of staff made clear his assessment that the enemy would not forgive itself if it passed up on this opportunity.
In response, Netanyahu’s office insisted that “The prime minister did not receive any warning and no one bothered to update him, neither before the slaughter nor the night of it. If they had updated him, October 7 would have looked totally different.”
‘Forgery for all intents and purposes’
In another segment of its broadcast Thursday, “Uvda” reported that in February this year, Maj. Gen. Avi Gil, who was Netanyahu’s military secretary at the time, swiftly jotted off a note to the attorney general after being told by a stenographer that the prime minister’s chief of staff Tzachi Braverman had pressed her to alter the timestamp on a transcript from the morning of October 7.
Braverman has been questioned by police on suspicion of doctoring the time of Netanyahu’s first call with Gil during the Hamas atrocities, changing it from 6:29 a.m. to 6:40 a.m. — when they had in fact by that time spoken a second time — after the stenographer rebuffed his request to change the transcript.
Quoting Gil’s testimony to police, the TV report said that after the stenographer told him Braverman asked to see the transcript and requested she change it, the military secretary entered the conference room at the Prime Minister’s Office to write a letter to Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara informing her about Braverman’s conduct.
“This is forgery for all intents and purposes. It’s criminal,” Gil was quoted as writing in the letter.
The statement from Netanyahu’s office denied Braverman forged the transcript, saying the matter “will be clarified thoroughly during the investigation.”
“Unfortunately, he is prohibited from elaborating on the issue until the end of the investigation,” it added.
‘Why are they firing?’
The network also reported on Netanyahu’s calls with Gil on the morning of October 7, with the latter first phoning the premier at 6:29 a.m. using the WhatsApp messaging app.
Netanyahu, who was at his home in Caesarea, reportedly asked, “Why are they firing [rockets]?”
Gil then said he was gathering details to understand what was going on and that the two would speak soon, which they did again at 6:40 a.m. on a secure line.
“We are trying to understand what’s going on,” Gil said during the second call, explaining that elite commandos were headed to the Gaza border area and the regional military division was shifting to emergency readiness, according to the transcript quoted in the report. “There’s no doubt we’re in a different [sort of] incident,” said Gil.
Netanyahu reportedly asked if it was possible to take out Hamas leaders, with Gil saying he would check to ensure terrorists were not entering Israel amid the rocket fire, before adding: “We’re at war.”
“Uvda” said at this point in the conversation, Netanyahu apparently for the first time claimed he had been left in the dark by security chiefs about the prospect of a major attack from the Gaza Strip.
“We had no indications, I don’t see anything in the intelligence,” it quoted the prime minister saying.
Concurring, Gil said it would be necessary “to ask the questions later [about] how they surprised us.”
The report said Netanyahu stressed they still needed to gauge the extent of the Hamas offensive and whether the government would need to order a call-up of reservists.
“The General Staff needs to convene as quickly as possible,” the premier was said to add, before asking about the possibility the attack was also aimed at seizing hostages.
“That’s what we think,” Gil responded.
Netanyahu ended the call by ordering Gil to see whether it was possible to kill Hamas chiefs: “If someone is available, take them out, from [Yahya] Sinwar on down.”
‘A few days of legitimacy’
Hours later, senior government ministers held a meeting, during which “Uvda” reported that Smotrich told those gathered that Israelis would soon be demanding their resignations.
In another 48 hours they will call for us to resign because of the failure, and they’re right
“We have a few days of legitimacy until the magnitude [of the devastation wrought by Hamas] becomes clear. In another 48 hours they will call for us to resign because of the failure, and they’re right,” Smotrich, who heads the far-right Religious Zionism party, was reported to say.
Responding to the report, Smotrich’s office said he was not aware of the quote and pinned the blame “directly” on security chiefs for the failure to prevent October 7, claiming the government has “public legitimacy” to fire them.
Smotrich separately said Thursday that he didn’t know there was such a thing as a Nukhba Force before October 7, referring to the elite unit that led the massacres.
The far-right minister blamed what he said was the poor relationship between the political and military echelons, which left the former “isolated” and uninformed about Israel’s security challenges.
Press stories about Hamas’s Nukhba unit have gone back years, though, with the terror commandos having fought against Israeli forces as far back as the 2014 Gaza war.
“I did not know that there was such a thing as the Nukhba unit before October 7, and I am one of the people who invests in my position on the security cabinet and regularly reads and reviews materials. I did not know a quarter of the infrastructure that existed in Lebanon is for Hezbollah’s Radwan force. This was not brought to our attention. There are huge information gaps,” Smotrich asserted during an appearance at a conference of the Yesha settler lobby group, while claiming the military echelon’s leaders regularly disobey the political leadership.
