WhatsappAre those accusing Netanyahu of having ignored warnings about the Hamas massacre now demanding a preemptive war against the Palestinian Authority? Of course not.
The latest installment in the Oct. 7 blame-Bibi game comes courtesy of The Wall Street Journal. The piece echoes a report in The Atlantic.
Both assert that Abbas Kamel, then-head of Egypt’s General Intelligence Service, secretly flew to Israel 11 days before the Hamas massacre—and phoned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu twice after that—to warn that the terrorist group ruling Gaza was mobilizing for a major attack.
As The Atlantic acknowledged, Kamel offered no specifics: no date, no method, no targets.
But this hasn’t stopped the Israeli opposition from jumping on the story, which follows an article in the far-left daily Haaretz alleging that United Arab Emirates President Mohammed bin Zayed issued an identical alert to Netanyahu.
The claim—based on Hostages: 843 Days of Abandonment, a new book by Palestinian affairs journalist Shlomi Eldar and editor Ruth Yuval—is that MBZ told the Israeli prime minister about the plans of Hamas-in-Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar, killed by the Israel Defense Forces in October 2024.
Netanyahu promptly rejected the contentions. Nevertheless, his rivals continue to repeat them with glee.
After all, the Knesset elections are looming. And it’s hard to resist rewriting history to blacken Bibi’s reputation. You know, by inverting the truth about the lead-up to the worst atrocities committed against Jews since the Holocaust.
In fact, it was the heads of Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate and Security Agency (Shin Bet) who failed not only to predict the massacre-in-the-making, but didn’t even wake up the prime minister in the middle of the night to inform him that the mass assault was already underway.
To counter the defamation, Netanyahu has filed lawsuits against Israeli outlets Haaretz, Yediot Achronot and Channel 12, as well as journalists Eldar, Uri Misgav, Nadav Eyal, Barak Ravid and Attila Somfalvi. Ironically, these are among the many parrots of the notion (referred to by Israelis as the “conceptzia”) that Hamas wasn’t interested in “escalation,” that it was “deterred.” Oh, and that the real peril to Israel was internal strife, not external enemies.
But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Netanyahu had been aware of the imminent invasion and decided to preempt it by launching a full-fledged war. Would the paragons of “progress” at Haaretz and the global anti-Zionist contingent that reads it have cheered?
We all know the answer. Israel would have been accused of unprovoked aggression, and the loudest voices would have been the very people now faulting Netanyahu for allowing the slaughter of 1,200 people and the abduction of hundreds more.
Even after Hamas perpetrated the crimes against humanity the world witnessed—much in real time—Israel was and remains subjected to charges of genocide and other evil deeds. Imagine the response to a preemptive Israeli operation based on a vague heads-up from the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.
For months, female IDF field observers on the Gaza border were issuing concrete reports of Hamas drills involving raids and kidnappings. But those young women in uniform were rebuffed by their commanders to the point that they were told to cease pestering them or face court-martial. Tragically, many were slaughtered by the very same terrorists they’d been monitoring.
Which brings us to the current situation in Judea and Samaria (aka the “West Bank”). The threat there is no more theoretical than it was in Gaza; in some ways it’s more dangerous.
Gaza is physically removed from most of Israel’s population centers. Judea and Samaria sit in the heart of the country—just minutes from Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Petach Tikvah, Kfar Saba and Modi’in, from major highways and from Ben-Gurion International Airport.
Terrorism emanating from that territory is rampant. Fatah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other groups with the shared aim to annihilate the Jewish state commit daily attacks on Israelis, while digging tunnels and amassing weapons.
Nor do they hide their intentions. Two among endless examples documented by the research group Palestinian Media Watch are worth highlighting in this context.
The first is from the Telegram channel of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades on the day of the Hamas massacre. The post reads: “Allahu Akbar, come to jihad, come to jihad. To all our sons and brothers in the Palestinian [Authority] security forces throughout the West Bank—today is your day. Break into the settlements, strike the sons of apes of pigs, kill everyone who is a settler, slaughter everyone who is Israeli, by Allah, they are the most cowardly among men. Today is a tiding of days of victory, Allah willing—for this is jihad, jihad, victory or martyrdom.”
The second is a statement by Fatah Jenin branch member Abd Al-Rahman Abu Al-Rub on the P.A.’s official TV channel on Oct. 8, 2023: “[Oct. 7 was] a morning of victory and morning of joy, a morning of pride. … We in the Fatah movement … [tell] all our Palestinian people that they are compelled to take action and participate in this story of heroism with the Palestinian people that is realizing its natural right to fight the occupation and liberate the occupied lands [Israel].”
The point is that the potential for an Oct. 7-like attack from Judea and Samaria exists.
Yet are the anti-Netanyahu politicians and pundits calling for an all-out preemptive war against the P.A. and the terrorists it dispatches and funds? Of course not.
Instead, the Bibi-bashers are busy trying to distract the Israeli public and the world by focusing on the fringe phenomenon of “Jewish terrorism” against P.A. Arabs.
