Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday afternoon issued a statement responding to a morning report that he had received a warning from Egypt before the October 7 massacre.
Netanyahu announced he would file a libel suit over the claim and cited an official Egyptian statement published days after the massacre.
The full statement:
"In the months leading up to October 7, Prime Minister Netanyahu did not meet and did not speak with Abbas Kamel, who then headed Egypt's General Intelligence Service, and no Israeli intelligence body passed any Egyptian warning to the Prime Minister.
The Prime Minister has instructed that a libel suit be filed on this matter as well.
Beyond that, it is important to clarify: Prime Minister Netanyahu never meets or speaks with the intelligence chief of a foreign state without their Israeli counterparts.
In recent weeks the left-wing media has been conducting a vile and false campaign designed to pin all the failures and crimes of Ronen Bar on the eve of October 7 on Prime Minister Netanyahu.
On the night of October 7, Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar held numerous conversations with then-Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi and Aman chief Haliva, in which they discussed all the warning signs.
Despite this, Ronen Bar decided not to call and update the Prime Minister, not to alert the standby squads and IDF forces in the field, not to evacuate the Nova festival and only to send a limited Tequila team (which proves he knew of a real danger).
Behind the false blood libels stand also foreign states and hostile elements, including Arab states, with the aim of toppling Netanyahu's right-wing government and replacing it with a left-Arab parties government of Eisenkot, Yair Golan and Liberman that will withdraw from Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Judea and Samaria --- and establish a Palestinian state.
This is the question of the election: either right, or Palestine."
