October 7: An Election Campaign Issue In Israel

The single blackest day in Israel’s history, Hamas’ attack in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, has become a contentious campaign issue less than a month before the October 27 general election.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opponents pin this massive intelligence failure on him. Their argument is bolstered by reports that Egypt and the United Arab Emirates conveyed urgent warnings to Netanyahu that Hamas was planning a major military operation.

Gadi Eisenkot, one of Netanyahu’s chief adversaries, contends that he “behaved with arrogance and irresponsibility” when presented with such warnings, and that he was “afraid of the truth.”

Netanyahu has repeatedly denied these allegations and contends that Israel’s military and security leadership was actually at fault. Furthermore, he claims that if he had been awoken early enough on October 7, when Israeli officials detected concerning signs from the Gaza Strip, he would have ordered a swift counter-offensive, and a massacre could have been averted.

US President Donald Trump has come to Netanyahu’s defense. “You know, I think if he would have known, he would have done something about it,” he told Time magazine in an interview published on October 1. “Certainly, he would have had people at least alert.”

In the meantime, Netanyahu has sued several Israeli news outlets and journalists over their reports that he received warnings from the UAE and Egypt and did not act on them.

On September 29, Netanyahu’s Likud Party dismissed the reports as “a complete lie” and announced that he is suing, among others, Haaretz, Yedioth Aharonoth and Channel 12, along with reporters Shlomi Eldar, Nadav Eyal and Barak Ravid.

Rather than accepting personal responsibility for this disaster, he has shifted the blame to several key officials, most notably Ronen Bar, the former director of the Shin Bet internal intelligence agency, and Aharon Haliva, the former head of military intelligence. Netanyahu claims that Bar and Haliva were aware about warning signs of an imminent Hamas attack, but failed to inform him. Bar strongly disputes Natanyahu’s version of events and has threatened to sue him for defamation.

The Shin Bet and Israel Defense Forces have acknowledged major failures, saying they underestimated Hamas, misinterpreted its intentions, and failed to understand the scale and timing of the threat.

Netanyahu’s office, in March 2025, disclosed that it received a memo describing suspicious Hamas activity about three hours before the attack. The intelligence officer handling this matter supposedly did not pass it on to Netanyahu, thinking it had not been classified as urgent.

What seems clear is that Egypt’s intelligence chief, Abbas Kamel, called Netanyahu days before October 7 to warn him that Hamas was in offensive mode, The Wall Street Journal reported recently. The newspaper added that Kamel personally delivered a previous warning to Israel.

During his brief visit, Kamel allegedly warned Netanyahu that “the situation in Gaza was dire and could blow up in everyone’s faces.” Israeli officials purportedly ignored the warnings, telling Kamel that the situation was under control.

According to Haaretz, UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed phoned Netanyahu in late September to warn him of an impending Hamas attack. Neither the timing nor the magnitude of it was apparently discussed.

According to Channel 12, the UAE’s warning was essentially identical to information that the Shin Bet received from Sufian Abu Zaida, a former Palestinian Authority minister, who warned of an imminent “earthquake.”

Several days ago, the Israel media reported that Netanyahu flew to the UAE on September 28 to ask bin Zayed to deny reports that he had warned Netanyahu about a looming Hamas threat.

Netanyahu’s office and the UAE’s official media agency confirmed that the meeting took place. But Netanyahu’s office denied that he had gone to the UAE for this purpose. It called the report “fake news.” The Emirates News Agency issued a bland statement, saying that “the two sides discussed bilateral relations between the UAE and Israel and ways to strengthen and develop them.”

Ever since October 7, many Israelis, especially the families of the victims of Hamas atrocities, have demanded a conventional independent commission to establish what went wrong and who should be held accountable for the catastrophe. Netanyahu has refused to abide by their demand.

While the Israel-Hamas war was still raging, he said that a comprehensive investigation would be premature. The Israel Democracy Institute notes that this was the government’s official reason for delaying an inquiry.

Netanyahu and his supporters also claimed that such a body would not be genuinely independent because its members would be chosen by the president of the Supreme Court. He and his coalition partners have repeatedly argued that the current judiciary, particularly Supreme Court President Isaac Amit, is politically hostile to the government and therefore cannot be trusted to select the investigators.

A proposed compromise would have allowed a conservative judge, Justice Noam Sohlberg, to oversee the commission rather than Amit. Netanyahu’s government rejected that compromise, prompting media speculation that Netanyahu and his ministers were concerned that the findings of an independent investigation might not be in their favor.

Netanyahu, who has declined to accept personal responsibility for the failures, has instead supported a commission whose membership would be determined jointly by coalition and opposition politicians, with the aim of achieving broader public consensus.

A traditional state commission would be endowed with unusually broad powers and would be institutionally independent of the government. It could subpoena witnesses and make personal recommendations concerning responsibility. Its findings would examine the conduct of Netanyahu and his ministers and of the Israel Defence Force and the Shin Bet.

In all probability, an independent commission will not be established if Netanyahu manages to form another government, his seventh since 1996. But if he loses the election and is replaced as prime minister, Netanyahu will surely have to face the music, with all its attendant consequences.