For over a year, Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu was cautioned that his government’s actions had undermined Israel’s deterrence, leading terrorist organizations to believe that their “moment had arrived.” Despite these warnings, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid testified on Thursday that Netanyahu failed to respond and even seemed “bored and indifferent to the issue” during a joint briefing.
Lapid addressed an independent civilian commission in Tel Aviv, investigating the October 7 Hamas attack and massacre. The Yesh Atid party leader and former prime minister provided numerous examples where Netanyahu was informed by security officials that his policies were weakening Israeli deterrence and emboldening Israel’s enemies.
Lapid emphasized his intent “to debunk the claim” that the political leadership was unaware that Hamas no longer feared attacking Israel. He confirmed that both he and Netanyahu were briefed on the situation. Although he noted that “on October 7 there was no tactical, concrete warning of the breaching of the fence,” he pointed out there were “repeated strategic warnings of an eruption of violence and the loss of deterrence.”
“It is not true that the political system was not alerted to the October 7 disaster. For months, the prime minister and cabinet ministers received a series of severe and unprecedented warnings and did nothing,” Lapid told the commission, which was formed by groups representing survivors and victims, after Netanyahu refused to initiate an official state inquiry.
Lapid recounted a security briefing he received from Ronen Bar, the Shin Bet chief, on the evening before the Knesset vote on the reasonableness law in July 2023. Bar warned him of “the security consequences of the coup d’état and the internal rift it was causing.”
The reasonableness bill was part of a contentious judicial overhaul pursued by the government last year, which some critics labeled as an attempted coup.
“From the middle of 2023, there were more and more voices within the terrorist organizations who said that the moment they had been waiting for had arrived, and these voices appeared in the intelligence assessments and in discussions in the IDF, Shin Bet, and Mossad,” Lapid stated.
Lapid also remembered asking Bar if these warnings were conveyed to the prime minister and cabinet ministers, to which Bar replied, “Of course they were.”
Lapid added that President Isaac Herzog was also informed about the increasing security threat and expressed his concerns in discussions with the prime minister. Additionally, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant attempted to reach a compromise with Lapid over the judicial overhaul legislation because of his fears that the deep societal divisions it caused were harming national security.
Gallant’s opposition to the overhaul was driven by IDF reservists’ threats that they would refuse to serve in an undemocratic Israel. He publicly warned that the proposed reforms posed “a clear, immediate, and tangible threat to the security of the state.”
Netanyahu announced Gallant’s dismissal last March for making this warning public, only to reverse the decision two weeks later amid intense public backlash.
According to Lapid, on Thursday, IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi sought to discuss with Netanyahu the national security implications of the divide over the judicial overhaul. However, Netanyahu declined to meet, prompting Halevi to send a letter outlining the dangers.
Although Lapid did not read Halevi’s letter, he stated, “the only reason for sending such a letter would be to document an unanswered security warning.”
Lapid also referred to a joint briefing on August 21, 2023, with Netanyahu’s military secretary, Brig. Gen. Avi Gil, during which Gil informed Netanyahu and Lapid that Iran and terror groups in Lebanon, the West Bank, and Gaza “all identified weakness, an internal divide, tensions, and a loss of preparedness in the army, alongside an emerging crisis with the Americans.”
Gil’s presentation, which summarized input from all defense agencies, indicated that Israel’s adversaries recognized an opportunity to strike. Lapid described this warning as significant but noted that “the prime minister — and here I am giving only a personal impression, so it can be disputed — seemed bored and indifferent to the issue and did not comment on it.”
Lapid mentioned this briefing during a recent interview with The Times of Israel, where he said that “all the signs, all the red flags, all the warnings” were evident, but Netanyahu “ignored them all.”
During his testimony, Lapid asserted that while “the discussion about Prime Minister Netanyahu’s motives or mental state is none of my business,” he believes that “the definition of the role of the prime minister and the cabinet — perhaps the most critical definition of that role — is the duty to stop everything in the face of this type and quality of intelligence and information, and mobilize the entire system to stop the threat.”
In the weeks following Gil’s briefing, Lapid said he reviewed classified intelligence presented to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, confirming that Israeli deterrence had significantly diminished. He examined top-secret information available to him as a former prime minister.
One document he reviewed, just weeks before the Hamas attack, “was unequivocal: Israeli deterrence has eroded dramatically; our enemies think they have a rare opportunity to harm us,” Lapid recalled, adding that it indicated Israel was facing “the greatest level of danger.”
The intelligence he encountered was so alarming that Lapid held a press conference on September 20, where he warned of an imminent “multifront confrontation.” He informed the commission of this press conference, quoting his statements that Israel was “drawing close to a multifront confrontation” and that “recent events at the Gaza border are precisely of the kind that in the past have led to rounds of fighting.”
On Thursday, Lapid accused Netanyahu of knowing that Israel’s deterrence had weakened and that terrorist groups were monitoring the societal divisions. He also alleged that Netanyahu was aware he had appointed ministers “who should not be anywhere near Israel’s sacred security” — specifically mentioning far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.
Lapid argued that Netanyahu knew Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad viewed “an opportunity.” He also knew it was the government’s responsibility to respond to these warnings and failed to act.
Despite directing much of his criticism at the current government, Lapid also condemned the defense establishment, saying that “instead of acting, it waited for the political echelon’s instructions,” which he considered “inexcusable.”
Nevertheless, Lapid emphasized that the IDF’s responsibility for the disaster “does not negate the political echelon’s responsibility” for what he termed “the worst mistake in Israeli history,” which he described as “preventable.”
“I have been asked many times if I think the October 7 disaster could have happened on my watch, when I was prime minister. The answer is no,” he asserted. “Even as the head of the opposition, I did not ignore [the warnings], and in the face of lesser warnings, in August 2022 I embarked on a proactive operation to eliminate the commanders of the Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip.”
Lapid noted that Hamas executed the attack using commercial vehicles and easily obtainable Kalashnikov rifles, concluding that “the dramatic change was not in capabilities, but in opportunity” and that “no doubt a prepared army and an alert political echelon could have prevented” October 7.
“Hezbollah has much more capability in the north in terms of weapons and readiness than Hamas had. The discussion on capacity building is part of the attempt to remove the blame for the lack of preparedness,” he remarked.
While addressing intelligence failures and the redeployment of many forces to the West Bank before October 7, Lapid assigned primary responsibility to Netanyahu, whom he accused of advancing “a concept of conflict management” that assumes the conflict can be managed indefinitely, partly by using Hamas as a counterbalance to the Palestinian Authority to maintain a power equilibrium between them.
Lapid accused Netanyahu of “wishful thinking,” believing he could manipulate an Islamic terrorist organization for political and strategic purposes without facing consequences, which he labeled as “the most serious political and security error in the country’s history.”
Responding to a question about Netanyahu’s policy of permitting suitcases filled with millions in Qatari cash to enter Gaza via Israeli crossings since 2018, Lapid noted that his brief government had “stopped the bags of money” and instead “transferred the money to the UN, and the UN purchased food vouchers.”
“Someone asked me not long ago on a TV program what I would do if I were the prime minister on October 7; I said I would resign on October 8,” he said.
“There is no country in the world where the prime minister, the head of state, is responsible for the biggest civil disaster in the country’s history, and the biggest security disaster in the country’s history, and is also accused of criminal corruption, and he is still the prime minister.”
Netanyahu has not publicly taken personal responsibility for the events of October 7 and has obstructed the formation of a state commission of inquiry into the catastrophe.
In response to Lapid’s testimony, the Prime Minister’s Office issued a harsh statement, accusing him of “lying again” and asserting that Netanyahu “did not receive any warning about the war in Gaza — not a month before and not even an hour before October 7. The opposite is true, and the protocols prove it.”
“Lapid, who brought in workers from Gaza and gave free gas to [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah while promising that this would prevent war, is the last one who can preach in matters of security,” the statement added, referring to a 2022 US-brokered maritime agreement with Lebanon signed by Lapid.
Lapid’s testimony followed that of former prime minister Ehud Olmert, who accused Netanyahu of silencing dissenting voices in the security establishment, and former defense minister Avigdor Liberman, who claimed that he had warned as far back as 2016 about the possibility of a Hamas attack similar to the one that occurred in October.
{Matzav.com Israel}
This was planned for years. Lapid did nothing to resolve it during his term as PM.
What exactly is their point – exactly what would they have done differently in 2016? By the looks of Lapid’s remarks, it is as if he is saying that Netanyahu had better give in to all of Lapid’s demands or else he will sic Hams on Israel by inciting “social division”.
On this very web site there is an article entitled “‘Hamas Doesn’t Want a War’: Top Secret Shin Bet Documents from Before 10.7 Revealed’. And while it states unequivocally that Hamas doe snot want war, it throws in an aside to “‘maintain a high level of readiness”. In other words, it was designed to blame Netanyahu in either case – if he went to war they will throw in the assessment that Hamas did not want war. And as now, Hamas did attack, they can throw at him the aside that “‘maintain a high level of readiness”.
It is very obvious that Israel long wanted to enter Gaza to root out the terrorists and that this is the only real solution. But doing so would be political suicide and receive immediate worldwide condemnation. UNLESS, it was in response to an Oct 7 like attack. It is very logical that someone made a tactical decision to allow such attack to proceed so as to provide room for making the desired counter-attack. Did that happen or not? You and I will never know, as with same question regarding Pearl Harbor and 9-11.
That’s straight out every Opposition Platform textbook. This goes back for millenia.
Precisely the reason they needed to get rid of the real Netanyahu.