Every Israeli Security Chief Owned October 7 Except One, and Polls Say He Could Still Win
Every Israeli political, military and security official who held responsibility on 7 October 2023 has acknowledged some share of the blame, except Benjamin Netanyahu, and three weeks before an election that was supposed to punish him for it, polls show his bloc still within reach of forming the next government.
Three Israeli opposition leaders in individual portraits beside a larger photograph of Prime Minister Netanyahu smiling at a campaign event. · Photo: Gili Yaari/Flash90
Every senior Israeli official with a share of responsibility for the 7 October 2023 Hamas massacre has, in some form, acknowledged it, every one except Prime Minister Netanyahu. He has refused to back an independent state commission of inquiry, the kind of body that would examine his own decisions alongside the military and intelligence failures already documented elsewhere. Asked about a September 2023 meeting in which Egypt's intelligence chief, Abbas Kamel, is reported to have personally warned of an imminent attack, Netanyahu's response was simply that no such meeting took place.
That pattern, acknowledging the failure elsewhere and denying it at the top, extends to the newest item on the election's ledger. Jonatan Urich, a senior aide to Netanyahu, has been charged with leaking classified intelligence and is separately suspected of helping funnel Qatari money that reached Hamas before the war, the same flow of funds Netanyahu once encouraged as a way to keep Gaza quiet. At the UN podium, Netanyahu has instead accused Qatar itself of spending untold billions to spread lies about Israel and brainwash young minds against it, a charge against Doha that does not touch why his own office stayed close to the same government.
The accountability argument has not translated into a clear opposition lead. Polling three weeks before the 27 October election shows the opposition bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot's Yashar barely ahead of Netanyahu's coalition in some surveys and essentially tied in others, with several small parties hovering near the 3.25 percent threshold that could swing a handful of seats either way. Eisenkot has called Netanyahu a liar in complete panic, but panic is not what the numbers are currently showing.
Then, on 12 October, an explosion struck a group of students on a school hike near the Lebanon border, killing one teenager and injuring twenty four, a reminder, three weeks before the vote, that the security record both sides are arguing over is still being written in real time. Whether that record ends up helping the government that presided over 7 October or the opposition trying to replace it is exactly what polls this unsettled cannot yet say.
