Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was briefed on the looming dangers to Israel ahead of Hamas’s October 7 attack, and was told by defense chiefs that national security was at risk, but willfully ignored “all the red flags, all the warnings,” Opposition leader Yair Lapid charged in an interview with The Times of Israel.
Consequently Netanyahu, who has refused to accept direct overall responsibility as prime minister for the failure to prevent Hamas’s invasion and slaughter, should have resigned on October 8, Lapid said.
The Yesh Atid leader and former prime minister mentioned a specific security briefing at which Netanyahu was present, and which he himself attended in his capacity as opposition leader, referred to “intelligence materials” that Netanyahu and he were shown, and cited what he said were direct warnings delivered to the prime minister by the heads of the IDF.
At the security briefing in the final weeks before the Hamas invasion and slaughter, noted Lapid, “He heard the same things I heard, from General [Avi] Gil, [the prime minister’s military secretary],” Lapid said. “And then I read the intelligence materials that he saw.”
“All the signs, all the red flags, all the warnings” were there, Lapid charged, but Netanyahu “ignored them all.”
A call for resignation may only be the first step, or a way to confront him and calling out his failures.