An article published in Haaretz on September 8, 2026 confirmed what many Israelis had suspected since the Hamas military-style attack on October 7, 2023, namely that Prime Minister Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu had received advanced warning of a coming operation, but had failed to act. The shocking story in the Israeli daily was excerpted from a book by Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval, titled Kidnapped: 843 Days of Abandonment (also referred to as Hostages: 843 Days of Abandonment), which states that Mohammad bin Zayed (MbZ), the President of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), called Netanyahu in late September 2023 to warn him that Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza, was planning an attack.

According to the authors, Netanyahu failed to notify his top security officials, implying at a minimum extreme negligence on his part. An earlier report had accused the Israeli Prime Minister of taking more than two hours to come to his office after being notified of the attack. The still-unanswered question is whether his failure to act was deliberate, to justify the ethnic cleansing and related war crimes still to be committed in response to October 7.

More details emerged of the call from MbZ in the September 25 New York Times, as well as in a report in the Times of Israel, which included that Abbas Kamel, an Egyptian intelligence official, had communicated a warning to Shin Bet Chief Ronen Bar and that was not acted upon. Unsurprisingly, Netanyahu called both reports “fabrications”.

Meanwhile, family members of victims of the Hamas attacks released a dossier on September 15, saying that documents show that the Hamas attack was the result of a pattern of 15 years of “intelligence and operational failures”. Netanyahu had been Prime Minister through most of that period.

Adding to Netanyahu’s siege mentality was the release of the film NAZA (NAZA being an acronym for collateral damage) by Israeli film-makers Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham. The film includes interviews with 24 soldiers and intelligence personnel who spoke anonymously of the use of AI in targeting and to determine what level of civilian casualties would result from bombing the homes of a Hamas member. One soldier stressed: “We are killing these children intentionally.”

Netanyahu reacted again with unhinged fury, seconding the demand that Szor and Abraham be punished. “We’re fighting worldwide antisemitic incitement,” he charged, adding: “But when it comes from within us, it’s intolerable.” Culture Minister Miki Zahor threatened to revoke the citizenship of the two film-makers, accusing them of betrayal of the state.

With an election coming on October 27, 2026, Netanyahu and his defenders are clinging to hopes that the polls are right that show most Israelis still believe that the genocidal attacks on Palestinians were necessary to protect the population from the alleged upsurge in global antisemitism.

Some Israeli intellectuals have asked how is it possible that a state which was founded as a sanctuary to protect those who had survived inhuman brutalisation can accept the murderous inhumanity by that state imposed against a native population. Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy has provided a partial answer: “Time and again, it’s astonishing to discover how the historical context and the collective memory have been obliterated here.”

This article was first published in Executive Intelligence Review (EIR) Strategic Alert weekly newsletter (Volume 40, No. 40) on October 1, 2026.

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Published by Koushik Das

Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das