DF investigation: Hours before the surprise attack, the Prime Minister's Office was updated with extensive intelligence information
The evidence in the investigation contradicts the version of Netanyahu's people, according to which the bureau was not updated on signs from the Strip: Col. S., the intelligence officer at the bureau, received news starting at 02:00, including alarming indications. This is the same officer about whom there was concern that senior officials were in possession of the documentation His embarrassment. The Prime Minister's office does not deny the news, but claim and emphasize that the Prime Minister himself received the The first report is only at 06:29
Throughout the night preceding the Hamas attack on October 7 , Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 's office received a series of updates from the IDF and the intelligence community, which included a lot of information about alarming signs, alongside reassuring signs, collected from the Gaza Strip from several sources: this is according to an IDF investigation which is being concluded these days, and focuses on the events of the last day before Hamas terrorists invaded Israel.
Some of this information was also transferred at the same time to the HML of the National Security Headquarters , which is staffed at all hours of the day, and is also part of the Prime Minister's Office and is under his responsibility and command. Col. S., the intelligence officer in the Prime Minister's Office, one of the people most valued by Netanyahu , he is the one who received the updates, through encrypted cellular communication and through phone calls from the operations center of the research division at AMAN, where the commanders asked to verify Because he received and read the messages.
The information was passed on to a series of senior officials at the General Staff, the Operations Division and the Prime Minister's Office from the HML, which operates around the clock of the Research Division at the AMN, which is supposed to receive and process in real time all the materials collected by the intelligence community. In cases where these are matters of immediate and urgent significance - The CML's role is to distribute these materials further. The Office of the Chief of Staff distributed the materials in a group in a WhatsApp-like application on the encrypted cell phone, where there are several very senior members of the security establishment, including Col. S., the intelligence officer of the Prime Minister's Office and the Prime Minister.
Through the encrypted phone, known in the IDF as a military cell phone, not only information about the activation of cell phones with Israeli SIM cards flowed; There was also information from other sources that the senior military command of Hamas went down to protected areas for emergency purposes - a sign that may indicate a possible attack is approaching. However, all the intelligence officials, led by the intelligence officer of the Southern Command who is responsible for gathering the data, held the opinion at the time that this was not an all-out attack by Hamas, and believed that it might be a drill, or preparations for an Israeli attack that Hamas feared, or - less likely - On a one-off raid by the organization across the border with the aim of kidnapping soldiers or civilians, and in any case, there is no immediate threat to Hall. Among other things, it was stated in these messages that "Today and yesterday the windows were blacked out in certain areas of Gaza. This is not an unusual thing, since such tests were carried out in Hamas last year as well. To the understanding of the division and the command, Hamas has not changed its routine."
The details of the conversations that took place on the morning of 7/10 between Netanyahu and his military secretary Avi Gil are currently being investigated by the police. This, after Gil complained to the ombudsman that the time and content of conversations were written down in a different way than what actually happened. When he turned to the office employee who compiled the records, she said that she had no choice - after a very senior official in the bureau ordered her to act this way
From 2:00 at night until shortly before dawn, the intelligence officer in the Prime Minister's office, Col. S., confirmed that he received these materials, including the summary of the assessment of the Chief of Staff's situation, which took place just before 4:00 and included the worrisome signs alongside the soothing signs. According to two senior officers in the IDF, Col. S. told senior military officials that upon receiving the information he tried to call several senior officials in the bureau - but was unable to reach them. The IDF spokesman refused to comment on the matter, including the identity of the parties with whom, if he tried, Col. S. tried to make contact.
Col. S. is the one about whom the suspicion arose , months later, that Netanyahu's chief of staff Tzachi Braverman was in possession of his embarrassing documentation - and tried to make unfair use of this documentation .
The investigation, which is one of many being conducted and nearing completion and conclusion in the IDF's investigation system, deals, among other things, with the manner in which the news was collected and received from Gaza with the help of the various sources, of the Amman and the Shin Bet, in the day before the Hamas attack. It examined the manner in which they were handled The news, how it was evaluated, and no less important - to whom it was distributed and when.
What emerges from the investigation contradicts the claims that have been heard from the Prime Minister's office since October 7, either officially as announcements by the bureau, or from spokesmen close to the bureau who hold positions in various channels and media - as if nothing of the alarming signs gathered by the intelligence community during the day before 6 :29 On the morning of the cursed Saturday, he did not arrive at the office in any form.
The details of the conversations that took place in the morning between Netanyahu and his military secretary Major General Avi Gil are the ones that are currently, among other things, at the heart of the police investigation. This, after Gil complained to the Legal Adviser to the Government Gali Beharve-Miara that the times of the conversations and the content of the conversations were put on the record in a different way than they actually took place. When he turned to the office employee who compiled the records, she told him that she had no choice - after a very senior official in the office ordered her to do so.
However, the dramatic material mentioned here, included in the IDF investigation, does not refer to that conversation - but to the hours before that.
On Monday, it was revealed in Ynet and Yediot Ahronoth that at the center of the investigations in the Prime Minister's Office are the "SIM card operation" - and the attempts to obscure knowledge of the issue before the attack . In the early hours of the night between October 6th and 7th, more and more signs began to emerge in the intelligence community about the installation of phones with Israeli symbols. The sim affair would shortly after the outbreak of war become one of the most heated points of contention between the security establishment and the Prime Minister's office and its head. The bureau has made every effort since the war to claim that Netanyahu is not responsible for the failure, and that all responsibility rests with the IDF and the intelligence community, who not only did not know that Hamas was about to launch an attack - but also excluded Netanyahu from the information that had accumulated until it began.
At the center of the SIM affair are two questions about which there is a huge debate: first, what did the Prime Minister's office know and what did the Prime Minister himself know about the SIM card monitoring operation launched by the Shin Bet, which was looking for signs indicating the possibility of a planned operation by Hamas in the years and months before the war? Second, what Was it reported to the Prime Minister's office about the fact that wires were activated during the previous two days, and especially the night before the Hamas invasion of Israel?
It turns out that this is a series of reports and at least one phone call, which reached the bureau and the MLA and included a lot of information. One report concerned indications of the opening of "emergency assets", such that Hamas used before and during operations against Israel. The report stated that in the evening hours of Friday , October 6, alerts were received about the destruction of these emergency assets.
At around 2:00 an update came regarding the destruction of the SIMs in certain areas of Gaza, and an indication that Hamas terrorists activated the Israeli SIM in a way that may indicate an attempt to evade possible Israeli surveillance. Along with the alarming signs, it is written in the material passed on to all the security establishment officials and the Prime Minister's office that a possible reassuring sign is the fact that even a year ago there were activations of phones with Israeli codes, part of a routine process of maintaining subscriptions and payments for these phones.
Later came an update about another indication, which may indicate "emergency conduct" by Hamas, a situation which may also indicate the possibility that Hamas is preparing for an Israeli attack, and is also preparing to attack Israel. Later, the Chief of Staff's summary of the situation was conveyed. At 3:55 - another announcement about indications of a transition to an emergency on the one hand, but also to routine on the other. While waiting for more materials from the intelligence officer of the Southern Command, a series of meetings and meetings of the situation were scheduled for the morning hours. "The information Primary and there are routine characteristics in Hamas. A discussion on the matter will be held by the intelligence officer of the Southern Command at 8:30 a.m. and by the general of the Southern Command at 10:00 a.m.," it said there.
Netanyahu was probably not informed directly. It is likely that it will be investigated why - and if they tried to wake him up
These things, which are revealed here for the first time, alongside the publications in "Kan" news and Keshet news that at 02:57 a report on at least some of these materials was forwarded to the headquarters hotline for national security, indicate that the claim that the prime minister's office or the professional bodies dealing with security on his behalf were updated only at the same time as the attack began Hamas is not correct. The Prime Minister was apparently not informed directly, and it is likely that an investigation will be conducted as to why he was not informed, and if the Chief of Staff, Colonel S. or other senior officials in the bureau tried to wake him up or should have woken him up.
However, as a senior official familiar with the details says, "It is possible, and this also needs to be checked, that in light of the data that was transferred and points to suspicious signs alongside normal signs, it was necessary to update the military secretary and the prime minister. But these are all happenings within the prime minister's office and among senior officials, and there are A distance of light years between them and the claim that the bureau first heard about the alarming signs only at the same time as the Hamas attack, by which time, of course, it was too late."
The Prime Minister's Office responded: "The first phone call received by Prime Minister Netanyahu regarding the Hamas attack on October 7 was received at 06:29 from his military secretary at the outbreak of the attack. The Prime Minister did not receive any prior information about this. If Prime Minister Netanyahu had received the information first Therefore, it is doubtful whether the attack would have been carried out as it was."
The National Security Headquarters said: "Contrary to Ronan Bergman's false publication in Yediot Ahronoth - the National Security Agency was not given any warning early in the morning of October 7