Ex-Israeli spy chief sues Netanyahu over October 7

Ronen Bar has accused the Israeli prime minister of ignoring repeated warnings before the Hamas attack and falsely blaming him for intelligence failures Former Israeli intelligence chief Ronen Bar has sued Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for defamation, accusing him of ignoring warnings ahead of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack and attempting to shift the blame for the security failures.

Bar, who headed Israel’s Shin Bet domestic security agency during the assault, filed the three-million-shekel (nearly $1 million) lawsuit on Wednesday.

Netanyahu had accused Bar of withholding intelligence and failing to alert troops or evacuate attendees of the Nova music festival.

Bar rejected the allegations, arguing that Netanyahu was attempting to deflect responsibility for the attack, which left around 1,200 people dead and saw 251 taken hostage.

Israel’s subsequent military campaign in Gaza has killed more than 74,300 Palestinians, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry.

According to the lawsuit, Shin Bet officers began sharing intelligence about unusual Hamas activity with the military late on October 6 and issued a warning at 3:03 am.

Netanyahu’s military secretariat was updated at 3:55 am, while Bar’s chief of staff briefed his military secretary shortly after 6 am.

Bar denied speaking directly with Israel’s military chief or head of military intelligence that night, contrary to Netanyahu’s account.

Read more Netanyahu ordered security service to spy on protestors – intel chief Bar acknowledged that Shin Bet had failed to anticipate the scale and timing of the assault and provide adequate warnings.

He accepted responsibility for those failures, which contributed to his resignation.

However, he maintained that Netanyahu had been repeatedly alerted to the risk.

Bar cited a February 2023 letter warning that Israel’s internal divisions and instability in the Palestinian territories could embolden its adversaries.

In July, he said he had personally raised the prospect of an attack, cautioning that intelligence agencies might not be able to predict it.

The filing describes further warnings in September and early October about Hamas’s growing capabilities.