Click the link below the picture
.
Israeli opposition politicians said on Tuesday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was “unfit” for office after a newspaper reported he had been warned that Hamas was planning a major operation weeks before the Oct. 7, 2023, attack but did not alert security officials.
The report in the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, which The New York Times could not confirm, said that Mr. Netanyahu had a 45-minute phone call with Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the president of the United Arab Emirates, in late September 2023, and was told about a plan by Hamas to attack Israel and destabilize the region. Mr. Netanyahu’s office has denied the report.
Mr. Netanyahu was said to have been unfazed by the revelations, responding that Israel was prepared for any scenario, according to the report.
On Wednesday, he vowed to sue Haaretz for libel, calling the report “a wicked fabrication with clear political timing,” in a post on social media. He said security officials had found no record that he had spoken with Sheikh Mohamed between September 2023 and the Oct. 7 attack.
A day earlier, Mr. Netanyahu’s office similarly said that he had not been personally warned by the Emirati president. “No warning was given to the Prime Minister from the United Arab Emirates,” it said. “If there was any relevant information, it was passed through intelligence channels between the two countries.”
The Emirati foreign ministry said in a statement that it did not comment on “media stories or speculation regarding conversations between government leaders.” It added that the Emirati and Israeli governments had “open and direct lines of communication” and that “all relevant intelligence” was transmitted between them.
The report that Mr. Netanyahu may not have been responsive to warnings about the attacks landed at a particularly sensitive time for him and Israel. National elections are planned for late October, and Mr. Netanyahu’s chances of being re-elected are not assured.
The questions about what the Israeli prime minister had been told, by whom and when in the period leading to the Hamas-led assault have become hot-button election issues in a deeply polarized country.
Mr. Netanyahu has sought to present himself as the only politician positioned to ensure Israel’s security. And he has seemed to shift blame onto others for the Oct. 7 assault, the single deadliest day in Israel’s history, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 250 others taken hostage to Gaza.
Recently, Mr. Netanyahu asserted that Israeli security officials had chosen not to wake him up in the early hours of Oct. 7, despite worrying signs from Gaza, because they had feared he would respond aggressively and set off a war with Hamas.
“If they had woken me up, everything would have looked different,” he said in a campaign video clip last month.
.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at a news conference in Jerusalem on Tuesday. Credit…Ammar Awad/Reuters
.
.
Click the link below for the complete article:
.
__________________________________________
James' World 2 
Leave a comment