FOLLOWING Oct. 7, 2023, the Hamas-led offensive has been portrayed as “Israel’s 9/11,” which came out of the blue. That’s not supported by facts. The Netanyahu Cabinet knew about the attack, in advance.
In his fiery speech to the UN General Assembly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back against accusations of genocide leveled against Israel, as many delegates walked out and hundreds of protesters rallied against him across Manhattan.
Netanyahu’s speech was an effort to shift attention away from a political storm brewing in Israel that won’t go away. It failed.
Oct. 7, 2023, was no surprise
In early 2025, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) investigations into the Oct. 7 attack disclosed severe, deep-rooted intelligence miscalculations and fundamental misconceptions on the nature of Hamas and its intentions by both the Israeli government and military.
Probing the same attack, Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, pointed fingers at Prime Minister Netanyahu. The key mistakes featured the political idea of Hamas as an Israeli asset, the intelligence misjudgment that it couldn’t launch a large-scale attack, and weak defensive deployment.
As we are approaching the anniversary of the Yom Kippur War (Oct. 5, 1973), the Hamas-led attack (Oct. 7, 2023) and the late October election in Israel, new disclosures have been made recently.
UAE president’s pre-Oct. 7 warning of a major operation
A week and a half before Oct. 7, 2023, UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, known as MBZ, called Netanyahu.
In that conversation, bin Zayed warned that Hamas’ then leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, was planning a major operation against Israel. He expressed concern that the event in question would not only lead to bloodshed but also destabilize the entire region and undermine the Abraham Accords.
To bin Zayed’s surprise, the Israeli PM felt there was little reason for concern. Netanyahu reassured him that Israel was prepared for any scenario.
The inaction of Netanyahu’s Cabinet on Oct. 7 was a colossal political failure at the highest level of the Israeli government.
Hamas leader’s pre-Oct. 7 warnings
Just days before, former senior Fatah official Sufian Abu Zaida, who mediated between Israel and Hamas before the attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, said that the two sides had been close to signing an agreement before the massacre.
Abu Zaida said that Hamas’ Yahya Sinwar warned twice in September 2023 that he was preparing a major operation.
Abu Zaida said Israel and Hamas were nearing a proposed arrangement, which involved Palestinian prisoners, easing restrictions on Gaza and measures concerning electricity, water and workers.
Subsequently, then Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar briefed Netanyahu on the meeting with Abu Zaida in mid-September 2023. Two days later, senior Israeli defense figures held an urgent discussion on Sinwar’s threat.
At the end of September, Egypt’s then intelligence chief, Abbas Kamel, came to Israel, reportedly to deliver a warning that Hamas was preparing for something big.
Repeated warnings, repeated inaction
As I documented this pattern in investigatory essays in late 2023 and eventually in “The Fall of Israel,” many of these disclosures had been known since late fall 2023, including warnings from the Israeli lookouts that were dismissed as routine training in Gaza.
Just days after Oct. 7, testimonies from members of the mainly female lookout units bolstered accusations that Netanyahu’s leadership fatally misread the dangers from Gaza.
Yet they were told by their male superiors that what they had seen were just farmers, and there was nothing to worry about — until many of these women perished on Oct. 7.
Abandoned hostages
After the Hamas attack, Prime Minister Netanyahu appointed ex-military commander Gal Hirsch to coordinate the cross-governmental response to 251 abducted civilians and soldiers.
As I noted in late 2023, the appointment of Gal Hirsch as coordinator for the hostage response was widely debated and criticized in Israel, given his earlier record concerning a prior botched abduction affair and bribery case.
Hirsch and his business partners were indicted for tax evasion of $1.9 million in a case concerning arms sales to Georgia.
Why did Netanyahu appoint as his hostage tsar a general who had already blundered one high-profile abduction affair, failed to protect his soldiers and had been indicted for corruption?
The IDF’s discarded warnings
Just days after Oct. 7, early reports and interviews suggested that the IDF had detailed prior knowledge of the Hamas offensive three long weeks beforehand, based on information from military intelligence’s Unit 8200.
Highlighting the extent to which the IDF’s Gaza Division was aware of a potential attack on Israel’s southern border communities, the document, which was ignored by senior officials, detailed a series of exercises conducted by Hamas’ elite Nukhba units in the weeks prior to its publication.
One of the most shocking sections of the pre-October-7 IDF report featured instructions relating to the taking of hostages, the number of which was estimated to be between 200 and 250. The actual tally was 251 captives.
Neglected Israeli communities in proximity to Gaza
When Israel was established, its founding fathers considered its border areas strategic. Adjacent to the Gaza Strip, these are the populated areas in Israel’s Southern District located within 7 km of the border and thus within the range of mortar shells and Qassam rockets.
But if these areas were strategic to national security, why were they so vulnerable on Oct. 7?
As I showed in “The Fall of Israel,” there had been significant budget reductions in the so-called Gaza Envelope areas. Furthermore, the per-capita budgets for 2023–24 were substantially below 2022 levels.
As long as the far-right Netanyahu government and its successors shun an independent and comprehensive investigation on the real causes of Oct. 7, the incendiary political environment will escalate.
The issue is no longer whether Israeli intelligence possessed some warning. It had many warnings. The question is whether the warnings were sufficiently clear that the catastrophe could have been prevented or mitigated.
Unless the idea was to weaponize Oct. 7 in an ultimate effort to legitimize something far more lethal — ethnic cleansing and genocidal atrocities.
Dr. Dan Steinbock is the founder of Difference Group and has served at the India, China and America Institute (US), Shanghai Institute for International Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore). For more, see https://www.differencegroup.net/ He is also the author of “The Fall of Israel” (2024), and “The Obliteration Doctrine” (2025).
This is a very short version of the original published by the Informed Comment (US) on Sept. 28, 2026.
