Journalist Claims Waking Leaders Would Have Prevented October 7th Attack

Israeli journalist and commentator Avishai Ben-Haim asserted that the key to preventing the October 7th Hamas attack was not in long-standing debates about intelligence concepts or financial transfers, but in the simple act of alerting political leadership in real-time.

In a social media post, Ben-Haim argued that if Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak, or even more recent leaders like Yair Golan, Ofir Winter, Avigdor Lieberman, Naftali Bennett, and current Premier Benjamin Netanyahu had been woken up on the night of the attack, it would not have happened. He extended this to 'almost any prime minister,' stating that waking them would have prompted an immediate military response.

Ben-Haim believes that while discussions about intelligence warnings, the prevailing security concept, and financial aid to Gaza are important, they distract from the core issue. He contends that any prime minister, upon being alerted, would have mobilized the army.

He further elaborated that a swift military response would have either deterred Hamas from launching the attack or caused it to fail at the border, preventing the scale of the disaster that occurred. Ben-Haim concluded by posing a critical question to military and intelligence officials: given the dramatic intelligence signs, why was the prime minister and the army not alerted? He offered his own answer: waking the prime minister would have prevented the destruction of October 7th.