Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a proposal to air strike Hamas terrorists in Gaza just weeks before the October 7 massacre, N12 News reported on Thursday.
According to N12, Netanyahu asked about the possibility of killing terrorists during a pre-Rosh Hashanah celebration with senior officials on September 13, 2023.
When then-Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) head Ronen Bar suggested that it would be possible "to kill them in their offices in Gaza," Netanyahu reportedly responded, "From the air in Gaza? Only if there were some terrible terror attack. Otherwise, it's better to do something small."
Bar files defamation lawsuit against Netanyahu
Only a day before N12's report, Bar filed an NIS 3 million defamation lawsuit against Netanyahu at the Central District Court in Lod, alleging that the prime minister knowingly published false accusations about his conduct before the October 7 attack to shift responsibility onto him.
The lawsuit, filed less than two weeks before the October 27 elections, centers on a September 28 post on Netanyahu’s personal X/Twitter account accusing Bar of “failures and crimes.” Alongside compensation, Bar seeks a court-ordered correction or denial and legal costs, and says he will seek disclosure of relevant documents held by Netanyahu.
In the September 28 X post, Netanyahu accused Bar of recognizing warning signs but deciding not to call and alert him. Bar rejected that accusation, saying that the Shin Bet shared the available intelligence with Netanyahu’s military secretariat and that he instructed his staff to update the military secretariat before the attack began.
Sarah Ben-Nun and Amir Bohbot contributed to this report.