Benjamin Netanyahu ignored an “explicit warning” in the lead-up to October 7th, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, the President of the United Arab Emirates, called Netanyahu a week and a half before the attacks with a specific warning, the journalists Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval report. They write that bin Zayed cautioned that Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in Gaza, was “preparing a major event” in the near future. Sinwar was quoted in the article as telling an official from the rival Fatah faction that he was planning a “zilzal”—an “earthquake.” Netanyahu seemed untroubled, a close adviser to the Emirati ruler told the journalists. He didn’t update the heads of Israel’s security establishment about the conversation. Instead, he assured bin Zayed that Israel was “prepared for any scenario.”
“Newsbreaks in Haaretz, a liberal paper with strong investigative reporting, are often met with silence by much of the country, or brushed off as leftist propaganda by Netanyahu and his mouthpieces in the media,” Ruth Margalit writes. “This story seemed to land differently.” Read about the Israeli public’s response to the report and what it could mean for the upcoming elections: newyorkermag.visitlink.me/N2…