Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday evening that there was “no betrayal” behind the October 7 massacre, rejecting claims of treason while continuing to distance himself from responsibility for the failures that preceded the Hamas attack.
In a video posted on social media, Netanyahu dismissed the suggestion that senior officials had betrayed the country.
(Photo: Reuters)
“Nonsense,” he said. “I’ve been asked before, and I’ve said several times: ‘Do you think there was betrayal?’ I said no, I don’t think there was betrayal.”
Netanyahu said the events instead reflected a major operational and intelligence failure in the hours before the attack.
“I think there was a failure, a major failure,” he said, arguing that warning signs had emerged during the night and early morning but that officials decided, because of what he called a “miscalculation,” not to wake him or launch a preemptive strike out of concern that doing so would provoke Hamas.
“That is a failure, but it is not betrayal,” Netanyahu said. “Unfortunately, it happened at a terrible price, but it was not betrayal.”
He also defended his wife, Sara Netanyahu, saying she had not claimed that treason had occurred.
“My wife didn’t say there was betrayal either,” he said. “It’s just nonsense.”
His remarks came after Sara Netanyahu gave an interview to Channel 14 in which she suggested that Democrats party chairman Yair Golan may have known about the October 7 attack before Prime Minister Netanyahu did.
“You claim you were a fighter on October 7. Early in the morning, you were already there, dressed and ready,” she said. “At a very early hour, when others did not know, such as the prime minister.”
Golan responded by sending Sara Netanyahu a legal warning ahead of a possible defamation suit, accusing her of spreading a conspiracy theory about his actions that morning. She later sent him a legal warning of her own.
Netanyahu has never formally accepted personal responsibility for the October 7 massacre, despite having served as prime minister during the years in which Hamas strengthened its rule and military capabilities in Gaza before carrying out the attack.