Netanyahu Was Warned About Hamas – Years Ago

As Israel approaches another election, a succession of reports has revealed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received warnings from Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Israeli security officials about the growing danger of a Hamas attack. He was also repeatedly cautioned that the turmoil surrounding his judicial reforms was projecting an image of Israeli weakness that emboldened the country’s enemies.

None of these warnings predicted that thousands of Hamas terrorists would storm across the Gaza border at 6:29 a.m. on October 7, 2023. That has become the centerpiece of Netanyahu’s defense. Depending on the allegation, he has dismissed the reports as fake news, denied receiving the warnings, blamed his subordinates, or insisted that everything would have been different if someone had awakened him earlier.

But the question is not whether Netanyahu knew the precise hour Hamas would attack. It is whether he knew Hamas intended to destroy Israel, had the means to inflict catastrophic harm, and was steadily increasing its capabilities. On all three counts, the answer is yes.

Start with the most obvious warning. Netanyahu, who has spent much of his political career portraying himself as the world’s foremost authority on terrorism, needed no intelligence briefing to understand Hamas’s intentions. The organization’s founding document declared: “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad.”

And yet Netanyahu approved of the delivery to Hamas of hundreds of millions of dollars in Qatari cash. The most charitable explanation for this catastrophic error was that he hoped it would lead to an improvement in the Gaza economy that would be an incentive to maintain calm, something that it failed to do even before Oct. 7. Others have insisted Netanyahu was purposely strengthening Hamas as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority to undermine Palestinian solidarity and thereby weaken the case for Palestinian independence. Neither explanation excuses what should have been obvious: the money would fund weapons, tunnels, training, and war preparations.

And that threat was also well known to Netanyahu long before Oct. 7. Israel repeatedly fought the organization as its rocket arsenal expanded, its underground infrastructure became more sophisticated, and Iranian assistance increased its destructive potential. Yet Netanyahu repeatedly chose “mowing the lawn”—periodically degrading Hamas’s military capabilities rather than undertaking the more costly campaign necessary to dismantle them. Each operation bought temporary quiet while leaving Hamas in place to rebuild and prepare for the next confrontation.

The principal reason given for failing to launch a Swords of Iron ground offensive was the fear of casualties in the type of urban warfare that was required to eliminate the terrorist threat. Those concerns were legitimate but only delayed the inevitable. The timing, which should have been decided by Israel, was instead forced upon it by the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

Netanyahu now points to military and intelligence officials who supported containment. But prime ministers are not elected merely to ratify their subordinates’ recommendations. They are elected to exercise judgment, challenge assumptions, and make decisions for which they are ultimately responsible.

This might be said of the entire defensive concept on the Gaza border, which depended too heavily on technology that ultimately failed. Technology became a substitute for preparedness. Netanyahu may have accepted his generals’ assurances that the border was secure. Still, he had every opportunity to question whether an army charged with defending Israeli communities should depend so heavily on systems that could be disabled or overwhelmed.

He did not listen to the advisors who advocated assassinating Hamas leaders before the massacre. Would that have made a difference? We can only speculate. But the decision not to act was another choice with consequences, not merely another intelligence failure for which others could be blamed.

Even without a specific warning of an imminent invasion, wouldn’t it have been prudent to be prepared for threats from Hamas and Israel’s other enemies on a Jewish holiday? Netanyahu certainly didn’t need a reminder of what happened on Yom Kippur in 1973. One of that war’s most elementary lessons was the danger of letting assumptions about enemy intentions override vigilance.

While the focus is on Hamas, the evidence is equally unambiguous regarding Hezbollah. The terrorists in the north also made no secret of their objective, and yet Netanyahu failed to act as it acquired an arsenal of 150,000 rockets and planned its own invasion. He understood the danger, repeatedly warned about it, and nevertheless allowed Hezbollah to build an arsenal capable of threatening virtually every part of the country.

Whether because of poor coordination, Hezbollah’s calculations, or sheer luck, a simultaneous northern assault that could have multiplied the catastrophe never materialized, or we would be discussing an apocalyptic failure of leadership. As it is, he failed to protect the citizens of the north from the rocket onslaught that ultimately forced tens of thousands of Israelis to abandon their homes. For months, communities along the northern border became virtual ghost towns while their residents lived as refugees in their own country.

Even now, three years later, the safety of those residents is tenuously dependent on a seemingly indefinite occupation of southern Lebanon. Israel has no reason to be confident the Lebanese government will succeed in disarming Hezbollah. But it has also learned, at considerable cost, the dangers of an open-ended military presence in southern Lebanon. It

Perhaps Netanyahu’s most revealing defense concerns the hours immediately preceding the massacre. He has repeatedly argued that he was not awakened when security officials detected signs of a possible Hamas attack. He insists that, had he been notified, he would have immediately mobilized the IDF and Air Force.

That claim is impossible to verify. What can be examined is his conduct after the attack began.

According to Netanyahu’s own timeline, more than two hours elapsed between his reported awakening, his arrival at the Defense Ministry, and his conversations with the IDF chief of staff and Shin Bet director. By then, terrorists were slaughtering civilians, overrunning military positions, and kidnapping Israelis. Families were desperately calling for help. Soldiers and civilians were fighting for their lives, often without reinforcements.

Netanyahu says he could have changed the course of events if he had been awakened earlier. Yet after he was awakened, Israeli forces still took hours to reach many of the communities under attack.

The military bears enormous responsibility for that failure. But where was the decisive leadership Netanyahu insists he would have provided?

If his intervention could have made such a difference before the attack, why was it not more effective once the massacre was underway?

And what was his excuse for failing to mobilize the government’s resources to meet the needs of soldiers and civilians in the immediate aftermath of the massacre?

Why did soldiers lack essential equipment, forcing Israelis and Americans to raise money to purchase supplies that should have been available from the military?

Why were displaced families, traumatized survivors, and communities devastated by the massacre so dependent on volunteers and private organizations for assistance?

Perhaps the most damning irony was that many of the people who stepped into the vacuum were the very Israelis Netanyahu and his allies had vilified for protesting his judicial reforms. Citizens accused of undermining the country became indispensable to keeping it functioning, demonstrating the strength of Israeli society while exposing the weakness of his leadership.

Yet another failure was his capitulation to the haredim. Rather than enforce the Supreme Court’s ruling requiring conscription, he put his coalition’s survival above national security and the principle of shared sacrifice. Netanyahu was repeatedly warned of the army’s critical workforce shortage, yet he let other Israelis bear the burden of defending the country disproportionately. Reservists served for hundreds of days, sacrificing their livelihoods, family lives, and physical and psychological well-being, while an entire segment of the population remained exempt from the obligations imposed on their fellow citizens.

And what of the thousands of soldiers, survivors, and civilians suffering from post-traumatic stress? Why wasn’t the government better prepared to provide the extensive, long-term psychological care that the catastrophe and prolonged war would inevitably require?

Netanyahu promised that Hamas and Hezbollah would be eliminated as threats and, three years later, they are weakened but remain dangerous. Hamas controls at least 30 percent of Gaza and continues trying to rebuild its military and political infrastructure. Hezbollah is largely untouched north of the Litani River, where its best fighters fled, found sanctuary, and receive support from Iran to restore its capabilities.

Israeli forces remain deployed in both theaters, with no clear end to their missions. Netanyahu has yet to explain how Israelis living along either frontier can enjoy lasting security without an indefinite military presence beyond the border.

While he warned everyone else about terrorism, Netanyahu failed to challenge the assumptions that guided Israeli policy, strengthen border defenses, and confront the growing danger. He did not need an Egyptian warning, an Emirati message, or a midnight telephone call to know that Hamas and Hezbollah were preparing for war. Their intentions were public, their arsenals were growing, and their attacks were already costing Israeli lives.

No one exempts the military and intelligence agencies from much-deserved criticism for their failures, which require thorough investigation. Most of their leaders did not wait for that accounting, accepting responsibility and resigning soon after Oct. 7. Only the man on whose desk the shekel is supposed to stop has refused to accept responsibility.