Israel ex-security chief sues Netanyahu over October 7 claims

For more, we'll cross now to our correspondent, Noga Tarnopolsky. Hi, Noga, glad to have you with us. So the former head of Israel's Shin Bet domestic security agency yesterday actually sued Benjamin Netanyahu for defamation. Can you tell us more about his complaint and how that ties into other similar complaints about what the Israeli prime minister knew prior to the October 7th attacks? Absolutely. Good to see you, Aaron. So there have been, almost since the beginning of this war, around three years ago, there have been claims that Prime Minister Netanyahu had been warned by his own security officials. Let's set aside for now claims and reporting showing that he had been informed also by foreign allies. Prime Minister Netanyahu has defied Israeli law since October 8th, 2023, and refused to allow for the establishment of a National Commission of Inquiry, something that a huge majority of Israelis want and as I just alluded to is what the law demands the prime minister has stood very firm saying there will be no investigation that he doesn't trust one he doesn't trust the judiciary and that is all part of a cabal to overthrow his right-wing government in recent months the prime minister has even much more boldly flat out accused his security chiefs of treason. And I say that advisedly. Sometimes he says that there was material or information hidden from him intentionally by Israel's security chiefs. And at other times, he simply complains that no one called him. This may sound farcical, but it is the truth. Prime Minister Netanyahu complains that if someone had just picked up the phone and called him on the night between the 6th and the 7th of October, that this entire war could have been avoided. What we saw yesterday is, in fact, a bombshell. It is a $1 million lawsuit by the former head of Israel's domestic security agencies, Ronen Bar, a man who has accepted responsibility for his agency's failures, while all along saying that he had warned the prime minister that danger was emanating and imminent from Gaza. So the details in his lawsuit are really hair-raising. He says he has documentary evidence for all of them. He, for example, discusses one July 2023 cabinet meeting in which several of Prime Minister Netanyahu's ministers floated the idea of allowing Hamas, the Islamist terror organization, into the West Bank to take control from the Palestinian Authority, and he says he was forced to remind the government of Israel that Hamas is a religious organization whose aim is to destroy the state of Israel. He also provided a timeline of written formal warnings and of telephonic warnings that go all the way up to 3 a.m. on the morning of October 7th. So we really are in a situation of he said versus he said here in Israel. And what everyone is waiting to hear right now is whether the prime minister will claim to be protected by parliamentary immunity, as he's also a member of the Israeli parliament. If he has to respond to these questions, we will really see an exceptional moment of tension in Israel. Now, Noga, this is all the more interesting because it's just one part of a series of revelations over the past several months and years, really, about the Israeli prime minister's possible foreknowledge of the October 7th, 2023 attacks across Israel. Have these revelations had any impact on polling ahead of the elections? I mean, how do Israelis see these revelations? So that's a great question. Israeli political polls are notoriously of bad quality, so we wouldn't want to take it too far. But the numbers do show something interesting that may indicate an answer to your question. In other words, for now, most of the polls show the two electoral blocs, the bloc led by Netanyahu and the bloc led by his principal rival, Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief of staff, more or less in a sort of stalemate. There is a bit of a lead constantly for the opposition, but more or less in a stalemate. What's fascinating is that in recent days, different polls, the polls that ask Israelis, who do you prefer to see as prime minister, have shown a very large gap between what Israelis consider Gadi Eisenkot's suitability for prime minister that is creeping up towards 45 percent versus Prime Minister Netanyahu's suitability to be prime minister, which is in the low 30s. We even see Prime Minister Netanyahu losing credibility versus another one of his rivals, Naftali Bennett, who for now, a former prime minister, who seems to have less chances of forming the next government. But in answer to your question, these very direct personal accusations that indicate that the prime minister had foreknowledge and out of hubris decided not to act on clear warnings he was receiving, these may in fact be impacting Israeli citizens' assessments of whether he's fit for the job. Meanwhile, Noga, the government is set to deploy potentially hundreds, if not more, of activists to polling stations in Arab communities for the voting. What effect might this have on October 27th, the elections? Well, it's clearly aimed to be an effect of intimidation, and it's very likely to be an effect of intimidation. In fact, this, The Likud, Prime Minister Netanyahu's party, has made all sorts of outlandish requests, including to be allowed to film behind the polling booth in Arab communities, overtly racist requests. The National Elections Commission, until now, has rejected all of these requests, including requests to be allowed to postpone the election entirely, by the way. But this request to be allowed to send observers has passed. I expect that there will be legal challenges to this. But nonetheless, even the threat that kind of a thousand or more than a thousand of these Likud observers could come into Arab communities to check out who is voting and possibly how will absolutely have an intimidation or even an effect of frightening people into not voting that does appear to be its aim and we do have uh the leaders of arab majority parties here in israel uh demanding that that not happen right now it is all up in the air but very much part of a confusing puzzle in which the government is attempting to impact election day certainly shaping up to be a tense election day in Israel then. Noga Tarnopolsky, our correspondent in Jerusalem, thank you very much.