Netanyahu accuses security officials of intentionally not waking him on October 7

Israeli prime minister repeats assertions about 2023 security fiasco as he faces pivotal elections

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused security officials on Tuesday of intentionally failing to wake him on the morning of Hamas’ October 7 attacks, a day after his wife claimed an opposition figure knew of the onslaught in advance.

Netanyahu is heading into close-fought elections later this year, and has come in for sustained criticism in the national debate over who is responsible for the failures that led to the October 7, 2023 security fiasco.

The prime minister has alleged in the past that security officials refrained from waking him that morning, insisting that the attack would have been contained if he had stepped in earlier, but only in recent days has he begun to claim that the move was intentional.

“Why didn’t they wake me? Because they knew that I, as prime minister of Israel, would immediately have ordered to put the entire army on alert, to wake up all the towns (on the Gaza border) … It’s so obvious that all of this could have been done. This has been hidden from the public,” the premier said during a live interview on Instagram.

Netanyahu’s assertions echo those he made in another podcast interview published Monday, in which he blamed the military’s top brass and Ronen Bar, head of the Shin Bet security service at the time, for refusing to wake him to avoid the “miscalculation” of a military escalation with Hamas.

“They didn’t believe Hamas would attack,” he added. “They knew exactly what I would do.”