Sara Netanyahu's October 7 remark sparks defamation battle with former IDF officers; hijacked Israeli election agenda

Amid the ongoing election campaign, scheduled for October 27, Israeli political strategist Moshe Klughaft claimed that the real story of the campaign isn't just what candidates say, but what actually dominates public conversation. His remarks followed after Sara Netanyahu, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wife, claimed that Yair Golan, leader of The Democrats party, had prior knowledge of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack in which more than 1,200 Israelis were slaughtered, resulting in to launched the war that still continues to this day.

The development followed with Golan's defamation suit against Sara Netanyahu for spreading conspiracy theories and her counter-defamation suit against him. Golan is a former deputy IDF chief of staff, who donned his IDF uniform during the Hamas attack on October 7 and drove to the Supernova music festival in the South to help.

Sara's statement against Golan did not appear scripted, but it came after she was shown a clip of Golan cheering on protesters who demonstrated with noise outside the Tel Aviv hair salon where she was sitting in March 2023, during the judicial reform protests. This comes with another clip in which he denied as disingenuous her subsequent statement that threatened her.

In response, Sara stated that Golan should be embarrassed "by a situation in which you are throwing your weight around against a woman in a hair salon." She later contrasted the picture of a senior military man confronting a woman in a salon on that day.

"When you are a military officer of such high rank and claim that you fought on October 7, you were already there early in the morning, already dressed and prepared; at a very early hour, when others did not know, such as the prime minister," she said. Later she questioned, "In general, who is the prime minister who needs to know that a war is breaking out? Why inform him?"

She left the thought unfinished, yet its meaning was hard to overlook, particularly given that her husband has repeatedly stated in various forums over recent days that the outcome would have been drastically different had he been woken at 3 a.m., when senior security officials were reviewing indications of a potential attack.

This is precisely where matters get complicated, as multiple distinct claims are being lumped together under the emotionally loaded terms "betrayal" and "conspiracy." Sara was asked directly: "What do you say about the betrayal theory?" "I don't want to discuss it," she replied. "I don't subscribe to any theories, and I don't know. I support a genuine commission of inquiry."

Sara claims Golan chose not to alert Netanyahu

A more extreme interpretation of the conspiracy theory doesn't suggest that anyone actively colluded with Hamas, but rather that certain figures within the country's security establishment, Golan among them, were aware an attack was imminent and intentionally chose not to alert Netanyahu, driven by a desire to weaken or topple his government. No evidence has surfaced to back this claim.

After Sara's statement in the interview prompting the prime minister to release a short video clip stating that he has repeatedly been questioned whether there was a betrayal and has continuously answered that there was not. "I don't think there was a betrayal," he said. "I think there was a failure - a major failure - reflected in what happened during the night and morning before the attack."

In another video, he elaborated that there were multiple warning signs prior to the October 7 attack that were known to IDF chief of staff Herzi Halevi, Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) head Ronen Bar, and Military Intelligence chief Aharon Haliva.

A meeting among top security officials took place around 3 a.m., hours before the assault began at 6:29 a.m., yet Netanyahu was not roused from sleep. He is now pushing this very question, why he wasn't woken, to the forefront of public debate. According to Netanyahu, the explanation lies in a protocol that was submitted to the High Court of Justice. He claims that Bar pushed for sustaining a moderate, low-profile level of alertness to avoid triggering a "miscalculation," while steering clear of larger-scale action that could ignite an avoidable clash.

"This group believed that Hamas was deterred," Netanyahu said. “They did not believe Hamas would attack. So they were concerned that if they woke the prime minister - excuse me, 'that madman,' me, right? - they knew exactly what I would do. They knew I would deploy the air force there, mobilise the entire IDF, and not allow anyone to approach the fences - they would be killed immediately. So they said that this would lead to an attack or to an exchange of fire with Hamas, and that had to be prevented. If they had awakened me, everything would have looked different. That is the story of October 7. That is the story.”