On Thursday, Sept. 24, Benjamin Netanyahu used his address to the U.N. General Assembly to reject genocide allegations against Israel and rebuke its critics, Euronews reported. But a defiant speech cannot settle what Israeli officials knew before the Oct. 7, 2023, attack or decide the separate legal case over Gaza.
The human consequences are not abstractions. The Associated Press reported that the Hamas-led attack killed about 1,200 people in Israel and took 251 hostages. CBS News, citing a U.N. report based on Gaza Health Ministry data, reported that more than 73,000 Palestinians had been killed in Gaza since Israel’s military campaign began. TIME said it could not independently verify the figures; CBS reported that Israel disputes the toll.
Public accountability requires more than accepting a government’s denial or treating allegations as findings. An independent inquiry should test the evidence about decisions before the attack, while scrutiny of the war and its consequences proceeds on its own record.
What do the warning reports establish?
The public accounts describe separate possible warnings, not one verified alert. Euronews reported that The New York Times corroborated a Haaretz report alleging that United Arab Emirates President Mohammed bin Zayed warned Netanyahu of a possible Hamas attack before Oct. 7. The account said the warning was not passed to Israeli security chiefs, but it does not establish what Netanyahu personally received or did with the information.
A separate account by The Atlantic, summarized by The Jerusalem Post, said Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel visited Israel on Sept. 26, 2023, and warned officials of a possible major Hamas attack. The reported warning contained no date, targets or operational details, and the account did not establish whom Kamel met. Netanyahu’s office denied that he met or spoke with Kamel in the preceding months, or that an Israeli intelligence official conveyed such a warning to him. Former National Security Council head Tzachi Hanegbi also told The Atlantic that Kamel did not visit Israel and no Egyptian warning was delivered.
Former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant described a third, distinct account: a Hamas message sent through Shin Bet channels that Israeli intelligence agencies assessed as referring to a separate prisoner matter. Gallant told Euronews that he first learned about the reported foreign warnings from media reports. He said he had not been informed of them while defense minister. His account of the Hamas message is not an inquiry’s finding.
These reports do not prove that Netanyahu received and ignored a detailed operational plan. The denials, in turn, do not resolve who received which messages, how officials assessed them or what records exist. Those are questions an inquiry could examine without presuming the answer.
Why can’t the speech settle the Gaza case?
Netanyahu’s address defended Israel’s conduct and rejected genocide allegations. But South Africa’s case against Israel remains pending at the International Court of Justice. The court has ordered provisional measures; it has not ruled that Israel committed genocide, according to TIME.
That distinction matters in both directions. Netanyahu’s rejection is not a judicial finding, and the allegation is not a final ruling. The legal case and the questions about pre-October 7 warnings require separate scrutiny; a speech cannot decide either one.
The reported death toll in Gaza carries a verification limitation, but that does not make the reported loss irrelevant. Nor should suffering in Gaza be used to diminish the deaths and hostage-taking in Israel. Accountability has to keep the people affected in view without turning their losses into competing claims.
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Who should demand an inquiry?
The strongest argument for caution is that the warning accounts remain disputed and incomplete. That is a reason not to pronounce guilt. It is not a reason to treat the government’s denial as a substitute for examining communications, intelligence assessments and decisions.
Netanyahu has resisted calls for an official inquiry. Yair Golan, leader of the opposition Democrats party, has proposed that a future government establish a state commission of inquiry into the failures surrounding Oct. 7. That remains a proposal, not an existing investigation. Israel’s national election is scheduled for Oct. 27, according to Euronews.
A commission should examine what was communicated, who received it, how agencies interpreted the information and what decisions followed. Its task should be to distinguish documented facts from disputed accounts, not to begin with a political verdict.
The next government should establish the state commission Golan proposed, and the parties asking voters for power should say before Oct. 27 whether they will do so. The record—not a leader’s defiance, and not an accusation standing alone—must determine what happened.
