Netanyahu turns the UN into a shield as warning reports pile up

Benjamin Netanyahu has a problem that no amount of podium thunder can quite bury: the story is no longer only about the 7 October attack, but about what he may have been told before it. Fresh reporting from the United States and Israel has revived claims that warnings came from the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, and that they did not end up where they should have. That is the sort of detail that turns into a political trap very quickly, especially when an election campaign is already running hot.

The New York Times confirmed a previous Haaretz report that UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed allegedly warned Netanyahu in a secret call about a Hamas attack and that the warning was not passed to security officials. The same day, The Atlantic reported that Egypt’s intelligence chief, Abbas Kamel, made a secret 67-minute visit to Israel on 26 September 2023, 11 days before the attack, to warn of a possible Hamas assault. The report said the warning lacked specific details, which is hardly ideal when one is supposedly trying to prevent a disaster.

Netanyahu’s office rejected the reports and called them false. It said no warning had been given by the UAE before 7 October and repeated that the Egyptian account had been denied at the time and was now being recycled to manipulate the Israeli public. The office also said Netanyahu had not spoken or met with Abbas Kamel in the months before the attack, and that no Israeli intelligence official had conveyed such a warning to him. Egypt, for its part, officially denied on 11 October 2023 that it had warned Israel.

Then came Yoav Gallant, the former defence minister, who added another layer of discomfort. Speaking to Israeli Army Radio, he said Israel had received a message from Hamas through Shin Bet channels weeks before the attack, in which Yahya Sinwar warned that he would shake the prisons. Gallant also said he first heard about the foreign-warning allegations from media reports. If true, he added, such a warning would not be a political asset but a fundamental failure in the overall assessment of the situation. He further said that during the war he learned of sensitive conversations Netanyahu held with the Americans only after American officials called him to verify what had been said.

All this lands in the middle of an election campaign, with Israelis due to vote next month for the 120-seat Knesset. Netanyahu’s handling of 7 October has become a central issue, and opposition leaders have demanded an official inquiry into what was known before the attack and whether the warnings were ignored. He has refused those calls so far. Instead, he chose the United Nations General Assembly as his stage.

The result was a speech designed less to answer awkward questions than to drown them out. Netanyahu framed Israel as a country fighting for survival, attacked Iran, Hezbollah, Qatar and Turkey, and used the walkout by dozens of delegations as part of the performance. Many others stayed, including the United States, Germany, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, Japan and India. He clearly had two audiences in mind: the chamber in New York and the voters back home.

That is the real political calculation. When the questions are about warning signs, missed alarms and responsibility, a leader under pressure often prefers the grand stage to the inquiry room. It looks firmer. It sounds defiant. It also leaves the central issue untouched: what was known before 7 October, who knew it, and why the answers keep arriving in fragments.

Written by Thomas Nussbaumer thomas.nussbaumer@alpineweekly.com