Rosh Hashanah Reckoning: The Warnings Netanyahu’s Office Never Passed On

On the eve of Rosh Hashanah, a season traditionally devoted to introspection and moral accounting, a searing opinion column published in Maariv confronts the Israeli public with questions it has spent nearly a year avoiding.

The piece contends that the Hamas-led assault of October 7, 2023, was not merely a catastrophic intelligence failure but a political scandal whose full architecture remains deliberately obscured. Warnings allegedly arrived from the United Arab Emirates, including from Mohammed bin Zayed himself, and from Egypt, flowing through multiple military channels before the attack.

Yet those signals, the column argues, never dislodged the prevailing assumption that Hamas sought calm and could be contained through quiet arrangements. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly insisted he was never warned in time, claiming history would have unfolded differently had the information reached him.

The writer finds that defense increasingly hollow, suggesting the more disturbing possibility is that the warnings did reach his office and were simply not passed onward to then-defence minister Yoav Gallant or military chief Herzi Halevi.

The column widens its indictment beyond October 7 itself, linking Netanyahu's office to the office of Qatar's president and to funds transferred into Gaza through that channel. It notes that current Defence Minister Israel Katz has not ruled out betrayal from within, and that a former office chief is suspected of falsifying protocols and a military schedule on the morning of the attack.

Compounding the domestic reckoning, the writer warns of widening diplomatic fallout after several major countries announced a broad boycott of settlement products from the West Bank.

TL;DR A pre-Rosh Hashanah opinion column alleges that Israel's leadership ignored advance warnings from the UAE and Egypt before October 7, 2023, and that the prime minister's office may have withheld critical intelligence rather than the security establishment betraying the nation. The writer links Netanyahu's office to Qatari channels and Gaza funding, demands a state commission of inquiry, and warns that a growing international boycott of West Bank settlement products is a lawful consequence of state support for violent lawbreakers, not antisemitism. The column closes with a plea for renewal, security, unity, and the return of Israelis who have emigrated.

The Unanswered Warnings Before October 7

The column's central factual claim is that Israeli decision-makers possessed actionable intelligence well before the Hamas-led attack, delivered through diplomatic and military conduits that ordinarily command serious attention. According to the writer, the United Arab Emirates transmitted warnings, including communications attributed to Mohammed bin Zayed, while Egypt also signaled impending danger.

Several military channels reportedly corroborated the picture, creating a mosaic of alarm that should have triggered urgent reassessment.

Instead, the prevailing assumption held firm: Hamas wanted calm, and the quiet arrangements that had been cultivated would preserve it. This assumption, the column implies, was not a neutral analytical error but a convenient conviction that served a political narrative of deterrence and stability.

The writer's framing suggests that ideology and wishful thinking fused into a policy blind spot of historic proportions.

What the UAE and Egypt Reportedly Conveyed

The warnings attributed to Emirati and Egyptian sources were not vague murmurs but specific, repeated signals that something significant was being prepared. Mohammed bin Zayed's alleged involvement elevates the matter beyond routine intelligence chatter into the realm of high-level diplomatic communication.

When a regional leader of that stature conveys concern, the column argues, ignoring it constitutes a deliberate choice rather than an oversight.

Egyptian channels, long accustomed to mediating between Israel and Hamas, likewise reportedly flagged the deteriorating trajectory. The writer's point is that these were not hostile sources seeking to embarrass Israel but partners with an interest in regional stability. Their warnings, if accurately reported, should have pierced the complacency that dominated the security cabinet's worldview.

The Assumption That Hamas Wanted Calm

The belief that Hamas preferred quiet was not invented overnight; it grew from years of calibrated escalation and de-escalation that appeared to confirm rational deterrence. Yet the column treats this assumption as the intellectual cornerstone of a catastrophic misreading.

When an adversary's behavior is interpreted through the lens of one's own preferences, evidence to the contrary becomes invisible.

This psychological dynamic, familiar to analysts of surprise attacks, explains how multiple warnings can coexist with absolute unpreparedness. The writer's implicit lesson is that comfort narratives are the most dangerous intelligence failures of all, because they require no conspiracy to produce disaster. They simply require leaders who prefer their assumptions to inconvenient facts.

The Betrayal Narrative Reversed

For much of the past year, Netanyahu and his supporters have labored to persuade roughly forty percent of the Israeli public that betrayal may have occurred inside the security establishment.

The column argues that this narrative, carefully cultivated through leaks and media surrogates, has now been turned on its head by the latest reporting. The alleged failure, the writer insists, lay not in the military chain of command but in the prime minister's office itself.

The rhetorical mechanics of this reversal deserve close attention. Had information from the UAE been reported as reaching Gallant or Halevi, the prime minister's office would have immediately branded it betrayal, the column claims.

That asymmetry reveals a political strategy designed to preempt accountability by directing public anger downward toward generals and intelligence chiefs rather than upward toward elected leadership.

Forty Percent of the Public and the Politics of Suspicion

The figure of forty percent is not incidental; it represents a durable political base whose trust has been systematically cultivated through years of grievance politics. The column's implicit warning is that this base may now be asked to absorb a contradiction: the betrayal they were promised was located elsewhere. Whether that base can pivot is a question with profound electoral consequences.

Public opinion in Israel has always been shaped by security credibility, and the October 7 failure struck at the heart of that compact. When a leader's core claim to competence collapses, the political system typically demands a reckoning.

The column suggests that reckoning is being deferred through procedural obstruction and narrative manipulation rather than confronted directly.

Qatar, Gaza Funds, and the Office Connection

The column cites links between Netanyahu's office and the office of Qatar's president, along with money transferred to Gaza through that channel. These allegations, if substantiated, would transform the debate from one about negligence into one about active financial entanglement with actors connected to Hamas. The writer treats the Qatari dimension as the thread that ties together otherwise disparate scandals.

Current Defence Minister Israel Katz has reportedly not ruled out the possibility of betrayal, a striking statement from within the governing coalition itself. When a sitting defense minister leaves such a possibility open, the political insulation around the prime minister's office visibly thins. The column seizes on this ambiguity as evidence that even loyalists sense the ground shifting.

Evidence, Time, and the Demand for Inquiry

The column's most urgent warning concerns the erosion of evidence itself. Time is passing, material is disappearing, and testimony is being coordinated, the writer observes with evident alarm. These three verbs form a quiet indictment of a system in which accountability is not merely delayed but actively undermined by the ordinary passage of days and the strategic management of witnesses.

A state commission of inquiry, the column argues, is the only mechanism capable of cutting through this fog before the trail goes cold. Such commissions in Israel carry statutory powers of subpoena and public testimony, making them uniquely suited to reconstructing decision-making timelines. The writer's insistence on this instrument reflects a belief that ordinary politics has failed to deliver answers.

Disappearing Material and Coordinated Testimony

When documents vanish and witnesses align their accounts, the integrity of any future investigation is compromised before it begins. The column treats these developments not as bureaucratic drift but as symptoms of a system protecting itself.

The suspicion of falsified protocols on the morning of the attack sharpens this concern into something approaching evidentiary sabotage.

Coordinated testimony is particularly corrosive because it manufactures the appearance of consensus where none may exist. If multiple officials tell the same exculpatory story, investigators face a wall of mutual corroboration that is difficult to breach.

The writer's call for urgency is therefore not rhetorical flourish but a practical plea to preserve the raw material of truth.

Legitimacy, Fitness, and the Trust Request

The column states flatly that Netanyahu has lost both the legitimacy and the fitness to run the country, a formulation that goes beyond policy disagreement into fundamental disqualification. It accuses him of blocking investigations and of asking once again for a public trust he has already forfeited. The conclusion is blunt: he should be sent home.

This language matters because it frames the coming electoral contest not as a choice between competing programs but as a referendum on basic competence and honesty. When opinion writers invoke fitness rather than ideology, they signal that the debate has shifted from what should be done to who can be trusted to do anything at all.

The Settlement Boycott and Its Real Causes

The column pivots from domestic accountability to international consequence, warning of widening diplomatic fallout after several major countries announced a broad boycott of products from settlements in the West Bank. The writer is careful to distinguish this boycott from antisemitism and from reflexive anti-Israel sentiment.

Instead, it is presented as a direct result of government support for lawbreakers who attack Palestinians and their property.

This distinction carries significant moral weight. By refusing the comfortable label of bigotry, the column denies Israeli officials the rhetorical escape hatch they habitually deploy. The boycott, in this reading, is not an assault on Jewish identity but a measured response to specific, documented conduct that the state has chosen to tolerate and even champion.

Why This Is Not Antisemitism

The writer's insistence that the boycott is neither antisemitism nor simple anti-Israel feeling reflects a sophisticated understanding of how international pressure actually works. Boycotts targeting specific products tied to specific violations are fundamentally different from blanket exclusion of a people or culture. Conflating the two, the column implies, is a strategy to evade legitimate criticism.

Notably, the column cites the US ambassador to Israel, who has called attackers on Palestinians terrorists. When an American diplomat uses such language, the claim that criticism of settlement violence is inherently hostile to Israel collapses. The writer leverages this to argue that the international community is responding to conduct, not identity.

Government Support for Lawbreakers

The column's causal chain is direct: government support for violent actors produces international boycotts, and those boycotts are therefore self-inflicted. This framing places responsibility squarely on Israeli political leadership rather than on foreign capitals. It is a bracing argument that treats diplomatic isolation as a policy outcome rather than an external imposition.

By naming settlers who attack Palestinians and their property as lawbreakers, the writer rejects the euphemisms that often obscure such violence. The state's protection of these actors, the column suggests, is what transforms scattered incidents into a systemic problem worthy of international sanction. The boycott is the bill arriving for choices made in coalition agreements.

Hopes for Renewal, Security, and Return

The column closes not with despair but with a litany of hopes appropriate to the season: renewal, security, unity, sound national priorities, and reforms in education, health, and welfare. These aspirations function as a moral counterweight to the indictment that precedes them.

The writer refuses to abandon the possibility of a better year even while cataloging the failures of the last one.

Most striking is the final wish: the return of Israelis who have moved abroad. Emigration has become a quiet barometer of national confidence, and its reversal would signal restored faith in the country's future.

The column thus ends where it began, with the question of trust, but now directed toward the possibility of rebuilding rather than merely assigning blame.

Reforms in Education, Health, and Welfare

The specific mention of education, health, and welfare signals that the writer's vision of renewal is concrete rather than sentimental. These are the domains where state capacity touches ordinary lives most directly, and their deterioration erodes the social contract. Rebuilding them, the column implies, is inseparable from restoring political accountability.

Sound national priorities, in this framing, means reallocating attention and resources away from coalition maintenance and toward services that sustain a functioning society. The writer's implicit argument is that a government consumed by survival cannot govern, and that renewal requires leadership capable of looking beyond the next vote.

The Return of Israelis Abroad

The wish for returning emigrants carries emotional and demographic weight. Israelis who leave often cite political dysfunction, economic strain, and exhaustion with conflict as reasons. Their return would represent a tangible vote of confidence that the country has corrected course and rediscovered a sense of shared purpose.

This closing aspiration transforms the column from a polemic into something closer to a prayer. It acknowledges that accountability and renewal are linked: only a nation that confronts its failures honestly can offer its departing citizens a compelling reason to come home. The new year, the writer suggests, is the time to begin.

What This Column Means for Israel's Political Future

Stepping back from the specific allegations, the column's broader significance lies in its timing and its target. Published before Rosh Hashanah, it invokes the season of judgment to demand a national reckoning that the political system has systematically postponed.

By aiming at the prime minister's office rather than the military, it reverses the dominant blame narrative of the past year.

The piece also demonstrates how domestic accountability and international standing are intertwined. The settlement boycott, in its telling, is not a separate crisis but a downstream consequence of the same governance failures that produced October 7.

A state that protects lawbreakers abroad and shields decision-makers at home invites both diplomatic isolation and internal decay.

Whether the column's specific claims are ultimately substantiated remains a matter for investigators and, potentially, a state commission. What is undeniable is the political force of its argument: that trust, once broken at the highest level, cannot be restored by asking for it again. The coming year will test whether Israeli voters accept that proposition or reject it.