Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday claimed that senior IDF and defense officials deliberately chose not to wake him hours before Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught because “they knew that, as prime minister of Israel, I would have immediately given the order to put the entire military on alert” and would thereby have prevented the invasion.
The remarks made during an Instagram livestream and broadcast on Channel 12 were similar to comments he made on a podcast on Monday and on Channel 14 on Sunday night, and mark a shift from Netanyahu’s previous claim that events would have unfolded differently had he been woken up before the attack began. Now, the premier alleged that defense officials intentionally kept him uninformed.
In both the podcast clip Netanyahu posted on Monday and the Sunday Channel 14 interview, the prime minister said that the security chiefs saw multiple signs of an impending attack but were still convinced Hamas was deterred. He alleged that they knew that if they woke him up, he would mobilize the air force and the entire IDF and ensured that anyone who approached the fence from the Gaza side “would be killed immediately.” The security chiefs believed this would have prompted an actual Hamas attack or exchange of fire, Netanyahu claimed, without proof.
