If Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could erase October 7 from the calendar and wipe it from history, he would not hesitate for a moment. That date began as a curse that turned his life and many of the ideas surrounding him upside down. As it returned year after year, it became a series of accumulated curses that would require a divine miracle to escape.
On that day, three years ago, the sky fell on his head. When he was awakened at 6:40 a.m., 11 minutes after the Hamas attack on Israeli communities and military positions in the south began, and was told what had happened, he could not comprehend it. When he was given the initial details, that “a large number of people had been killed and wounded, and hostages had been taken to Gaza,” he was psychologically shocked.
In testimonies published by Ben Caspit, a writer for Maariv, people close to Netanyahu who saw him firsthand during those hours said that “Netanyahu’s lower jaw seemed slack, his face was pale, he spoke little, and something obsessive and delirious had entered his behavior.” “Why did they do this?” he asked, referring to Hamas’s leaders.
Even Gadi Eisenkot, who met Netanyahu four days after the attack, testified that he saw him frustrated and stunned.
He Devoted Himself to “Erasing Gaza”
In practice, Netanyahu left the management of the state’s response to the attack and the retaliation to the army and the other security agencies. The positions he announced when he appeared before the media were little more than parroted repetitions of what he was hearing from those commanders.
The army chief of staff at the time, Herzi Halevi, revealed that when he was about to leave his home at 6:30 a.m., his wife asked him where he was going. He replied: “To erase Gaza completely.” The phrase became an operational plan, and then a new military doctrine for the army and the entire Israeli state. Netanyahu began translating it into political language.
But according to an investigation by Ilana Dayan on the Israeli Channel 12 television program Uvda, the initial reactions were panicked and showed that Netanyahu’s first concern was to distance himself from responsibility for the October 7 failure. The investigation quoted his aide Eliezer Feldstein, who described Netanyahu’s state during the first days of the attack as “panicked” and “extremely frustrated.” Rather than focusing on the broader strategic implications of the event and issuing appropriate directives, he assigned his media team its “first and immediate task”: to devise an immediate plan to contain the media storm and evade political responsibility, repeatedly asking in frustration whether the news was still talking about his personal responsibility for the failure.
The Moment He Woke Up
Many observers of Netanyahu’s personality say that what pulled him out of his own frustration was the frustration he saw among his staff and close ministers, turning him into a roaring lion. It was no coincidence that he embraced the names “A People Like a Lion” and “The Lion’s Roar” for the two wars against Iran. He considers himself Israel’s “Mr. Security.” He feared that the public would discover the weakness that had afflicted him and his team and demand his removal. He began shouting at them: “Get out of this mindset. Read what they are writing about us,” meaning “about me,” “and respond to them. Terrible things are being written here instead of blaming the army and intelligence.”
From that point on, the government’s political line became one of blaming the military leadership for having been asleep on guard duty and failing to gather intelligence and prevent Hamas from attacking. The security agencies tried to defend themselves. They acknowledged part of the responsibility, conducted internal investigations, and punished some officials. All the heads of these agencies resigned, including Halevi from the army, Ronen Bar, head of the Shin Bet, and David Barnea, head of the Mossad, along with dozens of other generals.
On the Israeli street, there is a widespread belief that the army and the other security agencies do bear responsibility for the failure, but people also want Netanyahu to bear responsibility for it. He refuses. Not only that, he has also refused to establish an official commission of inquiry headed by a judge to investigate what happened. He insists that he is “the inspired leader whom God blessed the people of Israel with at the right time,” as his wife said in several media interviews.
Deep Sleep
Today, Netanyahu sees the general election scheduled for October 27, 2026, as decisive, not for the people of Israel, as political and media circles say, but for him personally. October 7 is the central issue. Despite all his attempts to move beyond it, his many opponents in politics, the media, academia, and the deep state insist on reminding the public of that date.
He has yielded to their pressure and begun addressing their accusations. He says: “If they had woken me half an hour earlier, the outcome would have been different.” Ben Caspit wrote about this on September 8, 2026: “Today, three years later, he dares to say: ‘If they had woken me, this would have looked completely different.’ But in reality, it can be said that even if they had actually woken him that night, nothing would have happened. Absolutely nothing.”
It is not difficult to reach this conclusion. Sadly, no one could have woken him in the middle of the night and told him that Hamas was about to launch an unprecedented attack on the south, with 6,000 militants crossing the barrier and taking over communities and bases. But, unfortunately, they did not know. It was an unprecedented intelligence and operational failure. Everyone responsible took responsibility for it and resigned.
In reality, they had tried to wake him for weeks and months. Who did not warn him? The army chief of staff tried to warn him, but he did not want to listen. The head of the Military Intelligence Directorate, Aman, sent him three letters, but he did not want to read them. (“There is exaggeration in this,” said Linnon Megil.) Avigdor Lieberman warned him. Yair Lapid warned him. His defense minister, Yoav Gallant, tried to wake him. Gadi Eisenkot sent him a letter saying that the situation was more dangerous than it had been on the eve of the Yom Kippur War. Nothing worked. Now he complains that they did not wake him that morning. No alarm bell went unheard. He simply did not want to wake up.
The Pitfall of a “Decisive Election”
Netanyahu believes he can convince voters of his position and win the election. He tells himself and his team: “I must win the election. Losing is not an option. It cannot happen. This is extremely dangerous.” What he means is that if he loses the election, the first consequence will be the establishment of an official commission of inquiry.
More than anyone else, and more than the investigators themselves, he knows that an impartial investigation would reveal how deeply he was involved in the failure. He was the one who forced the security agencies to accept the transfer of millions of dollars in cash to Hamas. He was the one who used to say that “Hamas is a treasure. By maintaining it and keeping it strong, we prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.” He even convinced the most extreme members of his government of this theory, including Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
If he loses power, he will face the ongoing corruption trial against him, another corruption trial concerning the submarines that may follow, and perhaps a third trial over his role in the failures of October 7. His fate could be prison.
For that reason, Netanyahu will do everything in his power to prevent this danger, even if it means a war that would postpone the election.
