Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was sleeping in bed until minutes before Hamas attacked Israel because officials chose not to wake him, according to newly reported details about the assault.
Former Shin Bet director Ronen Bar ordered staff at 05:15 to inform the prime minister of an impending attack. However, officials failed to notify Netanyahu because they believed the warning was not worth interrupting his sleep for a matter lacking substance.
According to Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post, officials considered the warning to be a false alarm or a small-scale attack. They determined that waking the prime minister was not worth the effort given what followed afterwards.
Bar insisted on delivering the notification, leading officials to finally wake Netanyahu at 06:13. The warning came sixteen minutes before Hamas launched its attack against Israel.
Communication delay with military chiefs
A report by Israeli public broadcasting network KAN stated that Netanyahu then waited for his chief of staff, Tzachi Braverman, to arrive at military headquarters. Netanyahu required Braverman to assist him during a planned meeting with Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, who was then Chief of the General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces.
Because Braverman became trapped at his home and delayed his arrival, Netanyahu ignored phone calls from Halevi. The prime minister and the military chief only communicated three hours after the attack began.
Prime minister alleges deliberate delay
Netanyahu later addressed the situation in a post on Instagram, claiming that Israel Defense Forces officers intentionally avoided waking him for over an hour. He asserted that military officials knew he would have taken immediate action to prevent the slaughter.
Netanyahu wrote that officers were afraid that waking the prime minister would prompt him to activate the air force, wake up the entire military, and prevent anyone from approaching the border fences by killing them immediately.
Shin Bet is Israel's internal security agency, responsible for domestic threat assessment and intelligence alongside the Israel Defense Forces. The central command of the Israeli military coordinates national defense operations during major security emergencies.
