Netanyahu Accused of Hiding Shin Bet Warnings on Hamas Before Oct. 7

Israeli military and Shin Bet officials are accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of concealing a February 2023 Shin Bet report detailing Hamas's growing capabilities. This accusation comes after Netanyahu himself blamed the Shin Bet chief and the IDF chief of staff for the failures leading up to the October 7th attacks. According to a report by the Walla! news site, Netanyahu allegedly omitted the majority of the Shin Bet's findings from a report he submitted to the State Comptroller. The original Shin Bet report presented a "frightening picture" of Hamas's advancements, including its development of an "advanced offensive army," which contradicted Netanyahu's repeated assertion that "Hamas is deterred."

The Shin Bet report reportedly urged Netanyahu, as the ultimate recipient of intelligence assessments, to take action rather than pursue "buying calm." It highlighted how Qatari funding, which arrived in Gaza shortly after being approved despite strong Shin Bet opposition, was helping Hamas fill its readiness gaps. Military intelligence officers had informed Netanyahu that Qatar provided half the budget for the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.

Senior reserve officers told Walla! that in the initial days after the Hamas attack, high-ranking government officials and their aides engaged in two "wars." The first was shifting blame for the failures onto the security and intelligence apparatus. The second involved executing a vast array of covert, deceptive, and potentially illegal operations, allegedly driven by personal interests rather than national ones, to control the narrative and information flow from Netanyahu's office.

Netanyahu's office reportedly deliberately documented security and war cabinet discussions in the early days of the war using staff members, creating a single, unrecorded version of proceedings. This was allegedly to engineer a specific narrative for future investigations and for the State Comptroller's report. The report submitted to the comptroller, described as "forgery and deception" and containing "blatant lies," allegedly downplayed the Shin Bet's warnings. Netanyahu reportedly extracted a single sentence from the 55-page Shin Bet report, which focused on Hamas's investment in precision capabilities to create a "force multiplier" for ground incursions into Israel. The Shin Bet report warned that Hamas was actively seeking solutions to achieve its precise targeting goals, despite the border barrier Netanyahu had approved. The Prime Minister allegedly concealed the Shin Bet's findings on the development of Hamas's offensive precision capabilities, its arsenal of 1,000 to 1,500 rockets, and improvements to its tunnel network, including blast-absorbing doors.