There is a massive election campaign underway to make Netanyahu responsible for Oct. 7 and turn that accusation into a reason to vote him out.
I agree on one thing: Oct. 7 should absolutely be a defining election issue.
But the most important question in this election is forward-looking: Among the realistic candidates for prime minister, who can be trusted most to protect our lives from our jihadi enemies - Netanyahu or Eisenkot?
And every voter should understand what the parties they are considering would actually produce: a government led by Netanyahu, or one prepared to make Eisenkot prime minister?
So before accepting the argument that Netanyahu must be removed because he bears responsibility for Oct. 7, everyone should be asking some basic questions.
1. If Netanyahu was repeatedly warned by Israel’s military and intelligence leadership that Hamas posed such a grave threat, as is claimed by those trying to make him solely responsible, then why was the Gaza border left so catastrophically unprepared for precisely such an attack by those same IDF and intelligence officials? They did not need his involvement to heighten alertness.
Beginning around 9-9:30 p.m. on Oct. 6, the security establishment began detecting unusual Hamas activity.
By approximately 3 a.m., senior IDF and intelligence officials were being briefed.
Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi was involved. Southern Command chief Yaron Finkelman was involved. Shin Bet intelligence officials were involved. They discussed possible Hamas infiltration.
Yet the assessment remained that an attack was not imminent, to go back to sleep and reconvene at 8:30am for a follow-up assessment.
The army did not go onto full alert. The border was not massively reinforced. Battalion commanders were not recalled. The political leadership was not awakened. The police were not warned to cancel the Nova festival and send the festival goers home.
The IDF's own expert review later reached an extraordinary conclusion: during the critical hours before the attack, not one significant action was taken involving the frontline forces or reserves.
Think about that.
As an active IDF combat soldier who served in Lebanon and Gaza, this is incomprehensible to me. One of the most basic precautions in a dangerous sector is dawn readiness. My soldiers and I did it every morning 30 years ago in Lebanon and the Gaza border, not because we knew an attack was coming that particular morning, but precisely because dawn is a classic time for an enemy attack, and we always had to be ready.
But on Oct. 7 that most basic military action was dismissed.
So if senior commanders were already discussing unusual enemy activity and possible infiltration hours before dawn, how were forces along the border still not placed on maximum readiness? Literally still in bed!
The IDF's own investigations concluded that it was catastrophically unprepared for the invasion.
That is a fundamental military responsibility.
It is important that people understand, Israel is not the United States. Netanyahu is not personally the commander-in-chief of the IDF as the American president is of the U.S. military. The IDF is subordinate to the government, while operational command runs through the military chain of command headed by the chief of staff.
So either the security chiefs warned Netanyahu of an imminent threat and then catastrophically failed in their responsibility to prepare and defend the border accordingly, or the warnings were not what we are now being told they were. That contradiction demands answers, especially when these claims are emerging three years later, just before an election.
2. If Netanyahu was repeatedly warned by Israel’s military and intelligence leadership that Hamas posed such a grave threat, then why, on Oct. 1, 2023, just six days before the massacre, were the IDF and Shin Bet recommending to Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and other senior government officials that Israel increase the number of Gazans permitted to work inside Israel as a means of maintaining calm?
3. Why were the warnings of the tatzpitaniyot, the female IDF lookouts, on the Gaza border ignored?
The tatzpitaniyot, the army’s own eyes on the Gaza border, repeatedly reported Hamas training, preparations and increasingly alarming activity along the fence. Some even testified that when they continued escalating their warnings, they were dismissed and even threatened with disciplinary consequences from their senior commanders. The IDF later praised their professionalism and found that their reporting contained significant indications of unusual enemy activity before Oct. 7.
Then why were these female spotters doing their job, professionally watching Hamas with their own eyes, not taken seriously by senior command before Oct. 7?
4. And why, after the invasion began, did so many Israeli communities wait desperately for the army?
Every Israeli remembers the heartbreaking question from that morning:
“Where is the IDF?"
There were individual soldiers, police officers, security teams and commanders who fought with extraordinary heroism and saved so many lives. Many rushed south on their own initiative, even without uniforms or guns, and gave their lives saving Israelis. No orders from the army, no organized action to protect the border, just individual heroes who saved so many lives.
But institutionally, the IDF collapsed. Even Chief of Staff Halevi later acknowledged that victims were asking, “Where's the IDF?"
That cannot simply be transformed into an election slogan of “Netanyahu failed."
Netanyahu was prime minister. His policies and decisions before Oct. 7 absolutely deserve investigation.
But the immediate responsibility to detect an enemy attack, maintain military readiness, defend Israel's border and rapidly deploy forces when that border is breached belongs to the military and security establishment.
And the IDF's own investigations document profound failures in precisely those responsibilities.
So yes, make Oct. 7 an election issue.
But ask the right question:
Which leaders actually learned from Oct. 7? Who understands the enemy, abandoned the failed Oct. 6 doctrine and changed Israel’s strategy so it can never happen again?
Former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot is the one being promoted by the mainstream media and center-left political camp as the potential replacement for Netanyahu as prime minister. But former senior IDF officer Ofer Winter, now leading his own political party and someone who knows Eisenkot from decades of military service, has made his assessment clear: He does not trust Eisenkot’s military leadership.
Senior IDF Generals who Eizenkot helped shape and who served in his senior IDF command structure included failed Oct. 7 IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, disgraced Military Intelligence chief Aharon Haliva and former deputy chief of staff Yair Golan, now leader of the Democrats party. This is Eizenkot’s military legacy.
And during the war, Eizenkot advocated ending the Gaza war before Hamas was completely destroyed and argued for stopping against Hezbollah after the extraordinary James Bond-like pager operation in favor of a diplomatic arrangement. More recently, he announced a policy to allow 150,000 Gazans to work in Israel!!! This totally ignores the jihadi enemy in Gaza and returns to appeasement as strategy, the same failed military strategy that relied on deterrence, economic incentives and international guarantees that helped create the conditions for the army to fail preventing the Oct. 7 invasion.
The contrast could not be clearer: Eisenkot continues to promote the failed Oct. 6 security doctrine, while Netanyahu has overseen the IDF’s transformation back into a lethal fighting force focused on victory and defeating Israel’s enemies across multiple fronts.
That is what this election should be about: Who truly changed after Oct. 7, and who demonstrated the ability to withstand enormous pressure when Jewish lives were on the line?
Israelis should examine that record, not simply repeat the narratives of an election campaign.
Postscript: I’m digging much deeper into this for my book on Netanyahu and the war, the extraordinary story of how Israel rose from Oct. 7 to achieve what few believed possible. If you want to know when the book is available, click here to sign up: https://forms.gle/cNNUssPRU7mfnuuZ8