Prime Minister Netanyahu has claimed that the October 7 massacres “would not have happened” if Israel's military and defence leadership had woken him up early on the morning of the attack.
In interviews with Israeli TV networks on Tuesday, Netanyahu suggested that security officials decided against informing him of movements along the Gaza border because they knew he would order a significant military response.
“On that night, there was an assessment [by Israel’s military and security chiefs] that ‘we generals, heads of the security establishment, we are responsible people. And these politicians, including the prime minister, are laymen. They were elected? So what. We know how to act responsibly,” he told Channel 14.
He suggested that the officials were concerned that he would order them to “wake up the whole IDF” and that anyone approaching the border be “killed immediately,” which, he claimed, they feared could itself prompt an attack that, at that point, they were unaware was coming anyway.
“You asked me what would have happened if they had woken me? This [October 7] would not have taken place,” he said.
While he admitted that he could not say that “nothing would have happened” as “[Hamas] had prepared it,” he did suggest that a pre-emptive attack could have limited the scale of the tragedy and that he could have, for example, ordered the cancellation of the Nova Music Festival, at which dozens were killed.
Nonetheless, he insisted that the decision of defence officials amounted to a “great failure” and not any intentional “betrayal”, adding: “It played out in the night and on the morning before the attack, when all the signs were there, and they [the security chiefs] decided – because of a fear of a miscalculation, so as not to annoy Hamas – not to wake me up, and not to attack beforehand.
“That’s a failure, but it’s not betrayal. It happened, to my sorrow, at terrible cost. But it’s not betrayal.”
And Netanyahu also rejected claims that his wife, Sara, had implied any kind of betrayal, calling such allegations “nonsense”.
His comments came after Israel’s first lady appeared to amplify conspiracy theories regarding Democrats leader and former IDF Deputy Chief of Staff Yair Golan, who “re-enlisted” through the Home Front Command on the morning of the attack and helped to evacuate the Nova festival.
Golan was widely praised at the time for his heroism but, in her own interview with Channel 14 on Monday, Sara seemingly implied that his response was suspiciously fast and that he may have had prior knowledge of the attacks.
“When you’re a military man of such high rank, claiming that you fought on October 7, already early in the morning you were there, already dressed and ready at a very, very early hour when others didn’t know, such as the prime minister,” she said.
“Who is the prime minister anyway to know that a war is breaking out? Why let him know?”
In response, Golan accused the prime minister’s wife of slandering him and promised to file a lawsuit for over $825,000 (around £600,000).
Meanwhile, in 2024, the Netanyahus’ son, Yair, suggested that there had been “treason” within the IDF in the lead-up to the massacres.
This was disavowed by his father, who told the Knesset that “there was a serious intelligence failure [but] there was no treason,” though his mother did not rule out the theory, saying: “There should be a real commission of inquiry.”
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