Ronen Bergman
@ronenbergman · Middle East
Ronen Bergman is followed by Storyz World for journalism and current affairs coverage connected to Israel in the Middle East chapter.
Taub spews insults, abuse, and slander. There is only one thing he has not done and will not do: provide even one example of something we have written that is not true. In Taub’s world there is no settler violence and no settler terrorism, and by doing so he only encourages them to continue doing what he claims they do not do. Gadi Taub is one of the leading purveyors of poison, a liar hiding behind the guise of a university lecturer, a supporter of the fascist Orbán and the antisemite Carlson (long after it became clear who he was), and above all someone who will do anything to destroy the democratic institutions of the State of Israel. Taub enthusiastically supports and frequently appears on Channel 14, where they promoted the antisemitic narrative that Trump’s “Jewboys” advisers, Kushner and Witkoff, who like Jews care only about money, took bribes from Qatar and persuaded Trump to sign the deal, while betraying their own people. For Taub, the truth is not even an option. Just recently, after I caught him lying again, Taub continued to claim, and to lie, that he did not promote the blood libel and the vile conspiracy theory known as “betrayal from within,” which is eating away at Israeli society from the inside, saying:“Everyone who follows my podcast knows that I oppose the betrayal theory as an explanation for the events of October 7. There are countless places where I said this.” He also wrote:“So not only did I not support the betrayal theory. I even got into arguments with friends, and repeatedly blocked anyone who tried to use my feed to promote the harmful theory in the comments. What’s more, I made an entire program on my channel, together with Dr. Liad Levy, explaining why the theory is both implausible and harmful. The title was “Betrayal?”. Here is the post by Avinadav Begin, with excerpts attached from that same podcast in which he claims he explained why the theory is “implausible,” and another excerpt from a different podcast, a very partial list. There is no depth to which he will not sink, no value he will not trample, no filth in which he will not wallow, as long as he can say that Netanyahu is not to blame.
Translated from HebrewThis is how the blood-and-sausage-story factory that he and Erez Tamir opened in partnership operates: on one side, they put in a kernel of truth — a document, a quotation, an investigation. Out the other side come the deep state, treason and a military revolt. Here is a typical example from “The Generals’ Revolt,” a poisonous propaganda package saturated with lies and blood libels that masquerades as a “book” and a 4-episode “documentary” series. In practice, it is the flagship of the Netanyahu campaign, which since last week has officially adopted its narratives — both the hatred of generals and the claim that they tried to rebel against him. And so Erez Tamir reads the word “miscalculation” from the real Shin Bet investigation: on the night of October 7, at some point it was decided to refrain from activity that was too broad and could lead Hamas to mistakenly interpret that Israel was about to attack, thereby creating an escalation. Up to this point — a document. Then comes the magic phase. Tamir asks Gadi Taub: “Miscalculation? What does that have to do with this?” And Taub supplies the part that the document, how unfortunate for them, does not include: “What do we understand from this? We must not wake up the radical, crazy political echelon, because they will immediately react and drag us into a war we did not want.” What do we understand from this? Well, that is what Taub understands from it. It is just completely unclear how. Because the Shin Bet investigation contains no such sentence. There is no decision not to wake Netanyahu. There is no instruction to keep the political echelon out of the loop. There is not even a claim that anyone feared Netanyahu would order an attack. There is an operational consideration of whether activity by the forces on the ground could create a miscalculation vis-à-vis Hamas. But in less than a minute, Taub and Tamir performed the alchemy: “refrain from broad activity so as not to create a miscalculation” “do not wake Netanyahu” “the security chiefs decided to keep the government in the dark” “The Generals’ Revolt.” And the beautiful part: once the invented link was implanted in the middle, they no longer present it as a hypothesis. It becomes a “fact” on which the next twenty minutes can be built. This is how a conspiracy is manufactured: there is no need to falsify the document. It is enough to read one true sentence from it — and then invent the next sentence in an authoritative voice.
Translated from HebrewThis is how the sausage factory of blood-libel narratives that he and Erez Tadmor opened in partnership operates: on one side they put in a kernel of truth — a document, a quote, an investigation. On the other side come out the deep state, betrayal and a military revolt. Here is a typical example from «The Generals’ Revolt», a poisonous propaganda package saturated with lies and blood libels that disguises itself as a «book» and a 4-episode «documentary» series. In practice, it is the flagship of the Netanyahu campaign, which officially adopted its narratives starting last week — both the hatred of generals and the claim that they tried to rebel against him. And so Erez Tadmor reads the word «miscalculation» from the real Shin Bet investigation: on the night of October 7, at a certain stage it was decided to refrain from activity that was too broad, which could cause Hamas to mistakenly interpret that Israel was about to attack, thereby creating an escalation. Up to this point — a document. Then comes the magic stage. Tadmor asks Gadi Taub: «Miscalculation? What does that have to do with this?» And Taub supplies the part that the document, much to their annoyance, does not contain: «What do we understand from this? We must not wake up the extreme, insane political echelon, because they will react immediately and drag us into a war we did not want». What do we understand from this? Well, Taub understands it that way. It is just not at all clear how. Because there is no such sentence in the Shin Bet investigation. There is no decision not to wake Netanyahu. There is no instruction to compartmentalize the political echelon. There is not even a claim that anyone feared Netanyahu would order an attack. There is an operational consideration of whether activity by the forces in the field might create a miscalculation vis-à-vis Hamas. But in less than a minute Taub and Tadmor performed the alchemy: «refrain from broad activity so as not to create a miscalculation» «do not wake Netanyahu» «the security chiefs decided to compartmentalize the government» «The Generals’ Revolt». And the beautiful part: from the moment the invented link was implanted in the middle, they no longer present it as a hypothesis. It becomes a «fact» on which the next twenty minutes can be built. This is how a conspiracy is produced: there is no need to forge the document. It is enough to read a true sentence from it — and then invent the next sentence in an authoritative voice.
Translated from HebrewThis is how the blood-and-conspiracy-story sausage factory that he and Erez Tadmor opened together operates: on one side they put in a kernel of truth — a document, a quotation, an investigation. Out the other side come the deep state, treason and a military rebellion. Here is a typical example from “The Generals’ Revolt,” a poisonous propaganda package steeped in lies and blood libels that disguises itself as a “book” and a four-part “documentary” series. In practice, it is the flagship of Netanyahu’s campaign, which since last week has officially adopted its narratives: both the hatred of the generals and the claim that they tried to rebel against him. And so Erez Tadmor reads the word “miscalculation” from the real Shin Bet investigation: on the night of October 7, at a certain stage it was decided to avoid activity that was too broad, which could cause Hamas to mistakenly interpret that Israel was about to attack, thereby creating an escalation. So far — a document. Then comes the magic stage. Tadmor asks Gadi Taub: “Miscalculation? What does that have to do with this?” And Taub supplies the part that the document, much to their disappointment, does not contain: “What do we understand from this? We must not wake up the crazy extremist political echelon, because they will react immediately and drag us into a war we did not want.” What do we understand from this? Well, Taub understands that from it. It is just completely unclear how. Because the Shin Bet investigation contains no such sentence. There is no decision not to wake Netanyahu. There is no instruction to isolate the political echelon. There is not even a claim that anyone feared Netanyahu would order an attack. There is an operational consideration of whether action by forces on the ground could create a miscalculation vis-à-vis Hamas. But in less than a minute Taub and Tadmor performed the alchemy: “avoid broad activity so as not to create a miscalculation” “do not wake Netanyahu” “the security chiefs decided to isolate the government” “the generals’ revolt.” And the beautiful part: from the moment the invented link was planted in the middle, they no longer present it as a hypothesis. It becomes a “fact” on which the next twenty minutes can be built. This is how a conspiracy is manufactured: there is no need to forge the document. It is enough to read one true sentence from it — and then invent the next sentence in an authoritative voice.
Translated from HebrewWell, Atsbaoni woke up early from all his worries. Everything is collapsing, the story of the generals' revolt, in whose poisonous lentil Tartuffe he helped cook, without a single proof or piece of evidence, is withering in on itself; his attempt to claim that he neither preached nor gave a platform to nor disseminated the blood libel about "the betrayal from within" that is eating us up from the inside is proving to be another crude and brazen lie; and let us not forget the exclusive and astonishing historic scoop, thanks to which the way we understand the Yom Kippur War will be rewritten: IDF Chief of Staff David Elazar met Golda Meir, the prime minister, only on the second day of the war; this, of course, despite the fact that he met her twice on the day the war broke out and our Gadi forgot to Google, or does not know how to Google, or did not check that the person who fed him this nonsense had Googled. And for our Gadi, the truth is sometimes not even an option. A number of people, including @bodkim2022, have already written to him that this is a serious error, but he has not deleted the tweet and does not think you deserve an apology for having turned you into a captive audience in the propaganda wars he wages for Netanyahu. And by the way, our Gadi, I have just one question: if the story is really a complete fake, and especially during this period that is a honeymoon between Israel and the UAE, (and Netanyahu was even invited there for a secret visit, until he panicked because Bennett also got a meeting and leaked the security secret he had promised his hosts to keep secret)- why don't they make clear that Netanyahu is right and accurate and that the whole story of the phone call never existed? Why instead do they choose a sophisticated, convoluted wording that has everything except one component- a denial
Translated from HebrewNot long before October 7, the kingdom "gave Israel a warning about the possibility of a significant and imminent Hamas action against it" in the near term, says a senior Middle Eastern intelligence official familiar with the details of the secret part of the ties between the United Arab Emirates and Israel. The official confirmed yesterday at least part of the reverberating revelation by Ruth Yuval and Shlomi Eldar in Haaretz, a chapter from their new book "Hostages – 843 Days of Abandonment". The official said that the information came from a "very reliable" source, that those who received it in the Emirates treated it "with great seriousness", that it was "a short time" before the Hamas attack, and that it indicated that something might happen "very soon" – but the intelligence did not include an exact date. The official refused to provide further details about the information that was conveyed or answer the question of whether the intelligence conveyed to Israel was understood to have come from Yahya Sinwar's own circle (and not, for example, from another, less senior source), and was unwilling to comment on how the information was conveyed to Israel or on whether there had been a phone call in which the president of the Emirates, Mohammed bin Zayed, discussed the dramatic warning with Prime Minister Netanyahu. @YediotAhronot @ynetalerts
Translated from HebrewChannel 14 presents: a courageous exposé of the table of contents. First they black it out, then they reveal it. Investigative journalism investigating the work of its own graphic designer. Look at this brave journalistic work by Channel 14. “All the redaction comes off.” An exposé. Sophisticated motion graphics. Except that Channel 14 are the ones who added the redaction, just to remove it and try to create the impression that there is some kind of exposé here. The Prime Minister’s Office distributed this document to journalists back in February this year, and made a major media festival of it. Netanyahu spoke about it for hours in the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and promised that he would show the full documents to the Intelligence Committee within a week. That did not happen. The paper distributed then, with “בלמ״ס”—unclassified—written at the top, and the contents page, the one shown on 14 as if the redaction were being removed from it, had no redactions at all. In a series of articles @YRubovitch and I have published since then, we showed just how much this document, 55 pages long, is a collection of lies, fallacies, half-truths worse than lies, distortions, and above all—abuse of authority that Netanyahu illegally appropriated for himself, exploiting the control he has over classified documents, “approving for publication” what he is not allowed to approve, what Netanyahu would have hurried to file a complaint about with the Shin Bet if any other citizen had published it, and maliciously and gravely distorting the content of the documents. Now they are doing a second round with these cold (and false) noodles, first in a supposedly revelatory research project by Taub and a man named Moshe who are revealing to the world what has already been published and disproved. And Channel 14, blacking out in order to clean. Nothing new for them, at least not the first part.
Translated from HebrewPrime Minister Golda Meir met IDF Chief of Staff David Elazar twice on the day the war broke out, once in the morning and once at the cabinet meeting late in the evening. This does not include phone calls and exchanges of messages in both directions that took place throughout the day and throughout the war. Once again, you are caught in embarrassing ignorance or a pathetic lie. I don't know which of the two is worse. And this makes me interested in the investigative work you did ahead of publishing your international exposé. So what did we have there: 1. You wanted to defend Netanyahu, who claimed that if he had been awakened, he would immediately have instructed the chief of staff and the IDF to do this and do that. But when he was awakened, it took him many long hours to reach the Kirya, and only three and a half hours after the war broke out did he speak with the chief of staff for the first time—and so you received a message that someone passed on to you saying that it would be worthwhile or necessary to spread something about Golda, and you didn't Google? 2. Did you make up this nonsense yourself and not Google? 3. Did someone give you the information, and did you in fact Google, but your search turned up nothing different? In other words—is the truth important to you at all, or does nothing matter except exonerating the accused, of everything, always, no matter how many died along the way? And if the answer is number 3, then I think you should take a basic course in the internet and web searches. I heard that the Reich Center for Senior Citizens runs courses like these at a basic but high level. I did you the favor and found their website address because, as noted, I'm not sure you'll manage on your own.
Translated from HebrewErez Tadmor wrote a lengthy tract to prove that the prime minister’s intelligence officer is not the channel for passing on urgent information. It is a shame he did not read the prime minister’s office’s own response. Here is a selection of Tadmor’s claims and why they are either lies or profound ignorance, raising an even more serious concern that Tadmor has no idea even about the most basic procedures of the processes he pretends to investigate. 1. “The intelligence officer is not the route for transmitting information in an emergency.” As early as November 2024, we revealed that the prime minister’s intelligence officer had received, starting at 02:00, the worrying and reassuring signs, and that the Military Intelligence Directorate’s command center even verified that he was awake and had read them; the information was also passed simultaneously to the National Security Council’s command center. Months later, Amit Segal reported that the IDF chief of staff accused the intelligence officer of receiving the information and failing to update Netanyahu. And what did Netanyahu’s office reply? That the intelligence officer had indeed received the message, but Netanyahu was not woken because he had concluded that this was not an urgent event. The office did not claim that the intelligence officer was not the channel. It claimed that the channel received the information—and the assessment of its urgency was wrong. 2. “The first and proper route is a direct phone call from the IDF chief of staff or the head of the Shin Bet to the prime minister… That happened countless times.” No one who previously served in the relevant positions (service chiefs, IDF chiefs of staff, military secretaries to prime ministers, and former office staffers) knows the “proper route” Tadmor paved for himself. A former military secretary said: “Everything went through me”; and a former prime minister’s intelligence officer says: “There is no such thing as direct contact.” The practice became established following the lessons of Line 300: so there would be no private security calls ending with an organization chief saying “He ordered me to” and the prime minister replying “I didn’t say that”; and to prevent parallel channels in which each body gives a different picture and receives a different instruction. The military secretary is not an operator. He is the witness, the coordinator, and the control junction. 3. “A junior gate guard.” The “gate guard” is a colonel, the prime minister’s intelligence officer, whose role is to be the intelligence conduit between the intelligence community and the prime minister. One can argue that he erred by not pushing to wake Netanyahu; one cannot erase his role the moment it becomes clear that the material reached him. Calling the prime minister’s intelligence officer a “gate guard” is like calling the emergency-room director “the guy at the entrance.” 4. “A cooling assessment was attached to the message.” Tadmor and his friends in the propaganda machine copy, in a distorted form, what I published and then claim or hint that I concealed it. As I wrote, the worrying signs and the reassuring signs were attached to the message, everything that had been before the military and intelligence leadership. It all merely proves the lies at the basis of this blood libel: they passed on what was before them. They saw unusual signs, but also reassuring ones; they shared them through the information channel to the prime minister and at the same time interpreted them, in a grave and tragic mistake, as an exercise, routine, or preparations for an Israeli attack. There is a difference between “They understood that Hamas was about to attack and hid it” and “They did not understand that Hamas was about to attack and therefore did not warn.” The first is a rebellion; the second is the historic failure. You cannot use the assessment “Hamas is in routine” to explain why the intelligence officer did not wake the prime minister—and in the same breath claim that Herzi Halevi and Ronen Bar actually understood very well that an attack was about to begin and deliberately concealed it. 5. “Herzi Halevi and Ronen Bar took the authority for themselves… as if there were no government.” This is not a fact but a conviction of malicious intent. Where is the document, testimony, or protocol showing that they understood an attack was about to begin and decided not to wake Netanyahu because they feared he would attack? There is none. In place of evidence there is “There is no dispute about this”—Tadmor’s stock phrase when the dispute is the whole story. 6. “If similar information is received tonight, should Netanyahu be updated?” And if the prime minister receives so many warnings and alerts from the intelligence community over the course of a year, does he not have to hold at least one discussion about it? As for the question itself—yes. After October 7, the alert threshold must be much lower. But changing the threshold after the disaster does not prove that the previous threshold was set maliciously. The bottom line is simple: The information reached the prime minister’s office through the prime minister’s intelligence officer, was passed to the military secretary, and also reached the National Security Council. Netanyahu’s office itself confirms this. It did not reach Netanyahu because the system—including his own people—made a terrible error in assessing its severity. This is a failure. This is a conception. But to turn them into a “rebellion,” you need the one thing Tadmor did not provide even in this tract: evidence.
Translated from HebrewLet’s see who is deceiving the public. On page 28 of “The Generals’ Revolt,” Tadmor writes: “If Ronen Bar had presented Netanyahu, on the night of October 7, with a range of possible scenarios following the intelligence that had been received, including the danger of miscalculation, and allowed the prime minister to decide how to respond to the information and scenarios presented to him, there would have been nothing wrong with that from a democratic standpoint.” “The problem was that Bar decided that, in order to prevent miscalculation, he had to manipulate and scheme against Netanyahu. Keep him out of the loop. Make the decisions in his place.” This is not analysis, interpretation, or assessment. It is a sharp and clear statement of fact, in plain language, about contemplating the commission of a serious criminal offense and, following it, carrying out an act of unparalleled gravity against the state and its citizens—all of course on the condition that these things actually happened. But they did not happen, and this is a complete fake, a blood libel.
Translated from HebrewThe workshop for manufacturing conspiracies and blood libels, lesson 1: How to turn a real document into “the generals’ revolt.” This is how the sausage factory of Erez Tadmor and Gadi Taub works: on one side, they put in a kernel of truth — a document, a quote, an investigation. Out the other side come the deep state, treason, and a military revolt. Here is a typical example. Erez Tadmor reads the word “miscalculation” from the real Shin Bet investigation: On the night of October 7, at a certain point it was decided to refrain from overly broad activity that could lead Hamas to mistakenly interpret that Israel was about to attack, thereby creating an escalation. Up to this point — a document. Then comes the magic stage. Tadmor asks Gadi Taub: “Miscalculation? What does that have to do with this?” And Taub already supplies the part that the document, how unfortunate for them, does not include: “What do we understand from this? We must not wake the extreme, crazy political echelon, because they will immediately react and drag us into a war we did not want.” What do we understand from this? Well, Taub understands this. Because the Shin Bet investigation contains no such sentence. There is no decision not to wake Netanyahu. There is no instruction to compartmentalize the political echelon. There is not even a claim that anyone feared Netanyahu would order an attack. There is an operational consideration as to whether action by the forces in the field could create a miscalculation vis-à-vis Hamas. But in less than a minute Taub and Tadmor performed the alchemy: “Refrain from broad activity so as not to create a miscalculation” “Do not wake Netanyahu” “The security chiefs decided to compartmentalize the government” “The generals’ revolt.” And the beautiful part: from the moment the invented link was planted in the middle, they no longer present it as a hypothesis. It becomes a “fact” on which the next twenty minutes can be built. This is how a conspiracy is manufactured: You do not need to forge the document. It is enough to read one true sentence from it aloud — and then invent the next sentence in an authoritative voice. And now, Tadmor, show me the 95% of evidence you claim I missed. Waiting.
Translated from HebrewThe workshop for manufacturing conspiracies and blood libels, lesson 1: How to turn a real document into a “generals’ revolt.” This is how Erez Tadmor and Gadi Taub’s sausage factory works: On one side, they put in a kernel of truth — a document, a quote, an investigation. On the other side come the deep state, betrayal and a military revolt. Here is a typical example. Erez Tadmor reads the word “miscalculation” from the real Shin Bet investigation: On the night of October 7, at a certain point it was decided to refrain from activity that was too broad, which could lead Hamas to mistakenly interpret that Israel was about to attack, thereby creating an escalation. Up to this point — a document. Then comes the magic. Tadmor asks Gadi Taub: “Miscalculation? What does that have to do with this?” And Taub supplies the part that the document, how unfortunate for them, does not include: “What do we understand from this? We must not wake up the insane extremist political echelon, because they will respond immediately and drag us into a war we did not want.” What do we understand from this? Well, Taub understands it that way. Because the Shin Bet investigation contains no such sentence. There is no decision not to wake Netanyahu. There is no instruction to isolate the political echelon. There is not even a claim that anyone feared Netanyahu would order an attack. There is an operational consideration of whether activity by the forces in the field could create a miscalculation vis-à-vis Hamas. But in less than a minute, Taub and Tadmor performed the alchemy: “Refrain from broad activity so as not to create a miscalculation” “Do not wake Netanyahu” “The security chiefs decided to isolate the government” “Generals’ revolt.” And the beautiful part: Once the invented link was implanted in the middle, they no longer present it as a hypothesis. It becomes a “fact” on which the next twenty minutes can be built. This is how a conspiracy is produced: You do not need to falsify the document. It is enough to read a true sentence from it — and then invent the next sentence in an authoritative voice.
Translated from HebrewI read the “book” and also watched the “series,” and I did not find in them the evidence and proof even for the basis of the story. Perhaps you can help and point out to us where in the book there is: 1. a single case out of the “countless times” when the head of an organization called Netanyahu directly to deliver a warning, without the military secretary. 2. a single document, a single order, or a single testimony that Amit Saar’s 2019 article was adopted as doctrine by the IDF or the Shin Bet. 3. testimony or documentation that someone decided not to pass something on to Netanyahu. 4. a single piece of evidence that this article by Saar caused Bar and Halevi to conceal information from Netanyahu on the night of October 7, and that they in fact concealed something that under normal circumstances should have come to the prime minister’s attention, rather than making grave errors in reading the situation up to that point. The “generals’ revolt” remains what it was from the outset: a very serious claim, about which Netanyahu for some reason did not complain to the State Comptroller, wrapped in many quotation marks, followed by statements, assertions, and accusations for which there is not even the beginning of evidence or proof. They promised a generals’ revolt. In the meantime, we got a revolt of tweeters against the facts.
Translated from HebrewI suggest that Tadmor, Morag, Ozer, and Taub spare us the next round of insults and present: 1. A single case out of the “countless times” when the head of an organization called Netanyahu directly to deliver a warning, without the military secretary. 2. A single document, a single order, or a single testimony showing that Amit Saar’s 2019 article was adopted as a doctrine of the IDF or the Shin Bet. 3. Testimony or documentation showing that someone decided not to pass something on to Netanyahu. 4. A single piece of evidence that this article by Saar caused Bar and Halevi to conceal information from Netanyahu on the night of October 7, and that they had in fact concealed something that under normal circumstances should have come to the prime minister’s attention, rather than having severely misread reality up to that point. The “generals’ revolt” remains what it was from the outset: a very serious allegation, about which, for some reason, Netanyahu did not complain to the state comptroller, wrapped in a lot of quotation marks, followed by statements, assertions, and accusations for which there is not even the beginning of evidence or proof. They promised a generals’ revolt. In the meantime, we got a revolt of tweeters against the facts.
Translated from Hebrew"The Generals' Revolt": There are quotation marks, but no evidence. The lies that gave birth to the conspiracy driving Netanyahu's campaign are a standard trick in the machine: they take a real quote, use quotation marks as a certificate of authenticity, and smuggle made-up conclusions in behind them. The quote is accurate; the narrative is at the house's expense. This is how Erez Tadmor and Yonatan Dahuh־Halevi turned a 2019 article by the late Amit Saar about unplanned escalation into an IDF strategy and the secret motive of Ronen Bar and Herzi Halevi on the night of October 7. This is their ideological sausage machine: put in "systems," get "deep state" out. Dahuh־Halevi even found in Saar a doctrine called "maximum containment," except that the phrase, or the meaning he attributes to it, does not appear in the article at all. Dahuh invented a doctrine, attributed it to Saar, and then recoiled from it. Both screenwriter and state's witness. Here's another bit of magic: Saar discussed capabilities that would allow flexibility in the timing of an Israeli attack, even at the cost of giving up our advantage of surprise. Dahuh־Halevi turned that into willingness to absorb a surprise enemy attack. Who is surprising whom? A minor detail. Change the actor, and hey presto—we've arrived at October 7. Amir Baram's flattering introduction was also turned into approval of the doctrine, even though the publication makes clear that the views are personal. An introduction became an order; Saar's promotion became proof of adoption. At this rate, whoever liked the article was the revolt's operations officer. *And from here, the chain of "proof": Saar wrote; Saar was promoted; therefore the army adopted it; therefore Bar and Halevi concealed information from Netanyahu; therefore "the Generals' Revolt."* *What's missing? An adoption document, an order, a protocol, evidence that they even read the article, evidence that they relied on it, or evidence that fear of Netanyahu dictated their conduct that night. In other words, roughly the entire chain between the article and the conclusion.* Saar contains no instruction to hide information from the prime minister and no authorization to make decisions in his place. Tadmor and Dahuh־Halevi make the connection themselves, then blame Saar for the result. Some of the quotes are real; the manipulation begins when the quotation marks close. Five suspicious questions are not five pieces of evidence either. In "the Generals' Revolt," the quotation marks have shown up. The evidence is still absent. By August 31, 2026, Netanyahu had already said in his own words that generals decided "not to anger Hamas, not to wake me, and not to attack in advance." Then, when the storm around Sara erupted, he added a verbal bulletproof vest: "Failure, not betrayal." But if the heads of the system understood that an attack was about to break out and deliberately hid it from the prime minister to prevent him from acting, that is not a good-faith failure but a revolt and betrayal of the worst kind. So, in his distress to defend his wife, Netanyahu may deny the word while taking care to preserve the narrative. @ynetalerts @YediotAhronot
Translated from Hebrew"They Drank the Gas" Leaked Secret Dossier Sheds Light on Sudan’s Chemical Weapons Secretive bomb tests in the Sudanese desert. Suffocated scorpions, found dead on the floor of a weapons factory. Chlorine canisters taken from a water treatment plant in the war-torn capital. Sudan’s military has long denied American accusations that it used chemical weapons as part of the country’s devastating civil war. That accusation brought punishing U.S. sanctions on Sudan and its army chief, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. Yet the United States has never publicly substantiated the claim with proof. Now a dossier of evidence shared with The New York Times by a Middle Eastern intelligence agency bolsters those allegations, describing how and why Sudan’s military developed and produced chemical weapons over six months in 2024. Photographs, videos, documents and intercepted communications portray a secretive Sudanese military unit said to have produced chlorine-based munitions for use against the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group the army is fighting for control of the country. The dossier contains bomb blueprints, details of an apparent effort to cover up the project after its discovery by the United States, and a suggestion that some of the chlorine used to make the bombs was sourced at a civilian water treatment center that received the chemical from international aid groups. W\ @declanwalsh via @nytimes https://t.co/DBrOXQi73I
*Netanyahu complains that they did not wake him at night;* *this week he also added that it was intentional and part of a conspiracy;* if they had woken me, he said in the Petting Corner on The Patriots program on Channel 14, I would have immediately ordered the border closed, mobilized the entire IDF, activated the entire air force, and many other actions that would have saved the situation. One can guess based on past experience, but it is impossible to know for certain what would have happened if; *on the other hand, one can examine what Netanyahu did in the real world and in truth from the moment they did wake him, amid the outbreak of the war and in the critical hours immediately afterward. Ilan Lukatch prepared an investigation for the Friday Studio program, to which I had the honor of contributing a few words. @IlanLukatch
Translated from HebrewThe conspiracy: Netanyahu claims that the generals decided to keep him out of the loop and not update him about the worrying signs because they were afraid he would order an attack. The truth: The army transferred the sensitive information to the prime minister's office through two separate channels starting at 0200 and made sure that Netanyahu's intelligence officer woke up and saw the material. As we already exposed in November 2024, starting at 02:00, Prime Minister Netanyahu's intelligence officer, an experienced and senior officer with the rank of colonel who is responsible by virtue of his position for routing all classified information from the defense establishment to Netanyahu and back, received the materials about the worrying signs that emerged from Gaza, as well as the reassuring ones. At 0300, the duty officer from the Research Division's command center called to make sure that the prime minister's intelligence officer was awake and had read the material that had been sent to him earlier. At the same time, the same information arrived through another data route from Military Intelligence and the Shin Bet at the National Security Council's command center, which is also in the prime minister's office and subordinate to Netanyahu. These are exactly the bodies that are supposed, if the material warrants it, to update the military secretary and wake the prime minister. Therefore, the defense establishment did not keep Netanyahu's office out of the loop, and transferred the material as required. Should S' have woken the military secretary? Should the National Security Council's command center have acted in some way and drawn attention to the information? Were there other people in the prime minister's office who received an update but also decided not to wake Netanyahu? Excellent questions, but not in this context. What is clear is that the information stopped inside the office and did not reach Netanyahu. This was a failure of the office, which received all the material that was available during the night, and not any nonsense about a "generals' revolt".
Translated from HebrewThere is no doubt about one thing: Amalia Ozer's words prove that she is not the relevant professional when it comes to personal security. The question is whether Ronen Cohen is. After examining his experience, statements, manner of appointment, and the concern about a conflict of interest, the answer is still far from clear. Ozer claims that Cohen's recommendation to protect Gadi Eisenkot proves that the criticism of him was a “ridiculous and diabolical smear campaign.” Well, no. First, Cohen did not “approve” anything. The committee he chairs recommended to the ministerial committee that Eisenkot be protected until the election. This is a collective recommendation; the ministers are the ones who decide. Second, it is not even clear what the recommendation was based on. Ozer rules that there was no concrete information. By contrast, Israel Hayom reported—and the report was duplicated on additional websites—that the recommendation followed “new warnings and findings” conveyed by Eisenkot's headquarters. But why wait for the facts when one can conduct an intelligence assessment, write a verdict, and declare: “In my view, it was not right to approve such a significant expenditure of resources and public funds for a person concerning whom there is no concrete information about a real threat.” When Yair Netanyahu enjoys full state protection abroad for an extended period, questions about “public funds” and the existence of a concrete threat bother Ozer somewhat less. And above all: one decision does not erase a conflict of interest. A conflict of interest is not a prize one receives only after being caught making an improper decision; it is a situation in which an outside position or connection could affect—or create concern that it could affect—the performance of the role. A judge who slandered a defendant does not prove his neutrality by acquitting him in the end. Nor is the “statistic” Ozer markets under the name of Cohen's “professional experience”—that most assassination attempts occur without intelligence warning—a recognized statistical datum. No Israeli, American, or international study was found to substantiate this assertion, and there is no global database that makes it possible to calculate it seriously. The comprehensive study by the U.S. Secret Service found that attacks against public figures are generally the end of a process: target selection, planning, surveillance, approach, and sometimes the “leakage” of intent to others. At times the authorities do not have a focused intelligence warning—but in many cases there are advance signs and behaviors that can be identified. The study does not prove Cohen's “statistic,” certainly not the claim that most assassinations take place in an absolute vacuum of advance signs. The expression “beyond the letter of the law” is nonsense as well. The Shin Bet regularly protects seven symbols of government; the committee exists precisely to discuss protecting other people according to threat and risk assessments. Discussing Eisenkot is not a donation from Cohen's private pocket, and Eisenkot—or the public—does not need to thank him for agreeing to do his job. It is strange that only when the royal family is involved do the anxieties about “public funds” and about protection “beyond the letter of the law” suddenly disappear. In the midst of this madness, Cohen even says that he occasionally meets with the “anxious” Sara Netanyahu and that he understands her feelings in view of the threats against her son, even after it was published that her chief of staff repeatedly calls him again and again in the middle of a television interview he gave on the subject. One can certainly understand a mother's concern for her son, but what exactly is Cohen supposed to discuss with her? He is the chairman of a public committee intended to separate professional officials from politicians, and instead he goes to their homes. Cohen was apparently deeply impressed by Mrs. Netanyahu. He expressed his feelings in an especially effusive tweet he posted in the period before his appointment—and later deleted. Another tweet he deleted was written after one of the times Netanyahu claimed that they had not woken him at night for fear that he would be the only one with initiative and courage, and would attack Hamas. Cohen then wrote especially scathing things against him. But since then Cohen has managed to forget what he wrote—and was sure that we would forget too. By last weekend he was already attacking Eisenkot as a “dangerous man” and claiming that he was the only one who had not taken responsibility. The tweets were deleted. The conflict of interest, the questions, and the photographs—those are a little harder to erase.
Translated from HebrewShimon, what sophistry: you did not call for putting me before a firing squad—you merely said that your father would have said that a person who did exactly what you attribute to me should be put before a firing squad, and you added that you could “certainly understand” him. You did not mean me, of course. Just as in the tweet here you did not call for stopping me violently, and in countless clips from your program you did not attribute this blood libel to me. Every reasonable reader and viewer knows how to fill in the subject and predicate on their own. And since you recruited your late father as a moral authority for punishment: I heard that those fellows were fairly easygoing in their approach to sending people, including colleagues, to the wall (Shamir once told me about the Eliyahu Giladi affair). I wonder how your father and his friends would have judged someone who exposes information about the location of IDF soldiers during combat, just because he has to show off. He was a member of the “League of Zealots,” a group whose actions included setting fire to a café that operated on Shabbat, a bus, and cars. It seems that the son also has difficulty accepting restrictions that are not to his liking: when the censor limits you, you declare that it is “bullshit” and “politics”—and then continue exposing the locations of IDF forces in Lebanon on the air. The difference between us is simple: there is no “tribunal” finding against me—the three-person committee that rules on censorship matters—that one of my publications “actually caused real, tangible security damage.” There is one against you. The chief censor did not contact me following a broadcast and determine that a “serious censorship violation” had been committed. He contacted you. I did not expose the location of forces during wartime in a live broadcast without censorship approval; you did, and several police complaints were filed against you, and my publication, which you repeatedly and falsely and libelously call “exposing the pager operation,” did not expose pagers, a method of operation, a target, or a date. Unlike you, the publication passed censorship, and after countless attempts by the prime minister and his associates, all investigative and intelligence authorities announced that not only had no classified information been published, and not only had no damage been caused, but there had been no leak at all. So spare us the theater of the persecuted righteous man. Neither “Dad said,” nor “I didn’t name anyone,” nor a wink toward a firing squad leaves any real ambiguity. It is clear whom you were aiming at and clear what you sought to implant in the public consciousness—poison, lies, libel, and fabrication. But don’t worry—soon you will have another opportunity, this time off the air, to try to prove that you spoke the truth.
Translated from Hebrew"As a woman who also goes to the hairdresser" it is not certain that the blood libel against Yair Golan is the high point of the "interview" with Sara Netanyahu. Twelve minutes further into the interview, Netanyahu attacks the attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara. According to her, "the right-wing people and the people who basically want to live" (which, as becomes clear from the interview, are parallel and overlapping terms, since if Netanyahu is not elected, we will all die) "need to understand that the attorney general "does very, very improper things". One of them, God forbid, is Sara Netanyahu's harsh claims about how it is possible that "even after [the hair salon incident]", Miara, "as a woman who also goes to the hairdresser, there is no doubt that she also goes", did not call Netanyahu to lift her spirits, and even, to her great disgrace, "why didn't she write a post" on her behalf. The demand that Miara write a post raises the concern that Ms. Netanyahu does not fully understand the nature of the attorney general's role. This happened after Netanyahu accused the Shin Bet and the Prime Minister's Office security unit, which, according to her, hold information about very many people working so that "the entire Netanyahu family will be underground", but "no one is doing anything about it", along with further accusations and complaints whose common denominator is the identity of the victim.
Translated from HebrewAhhhh, this fake story, which says he is “not criminally guilty of anything.” Listen, Fathi, I don’t know how to break this to you gently—a long and detailed document, tantamount to an interim report, submitted to the Supreme Court on behalf of the Commission of Inquiry into the Submarines (headed by former Supreme Court President, Justice Grunis, whom Netanyahu greatly respected, and who was appointed president during Netanyahu’s tenure thanks to an amendment to a law Netanyahu promoted) says some very serious things about Netanyahu. If these conclusions remain unchanged in the final report as well, the acts described there will, with very high probability, require the opening of a criminal investigation. In any case, and in light of the interim report of the Commission of Inquiry, calling this event “fake” is simply, well, “fake”
Translated from HebrewFathi, with all due respect, two questions: First: What fake news are you talking about? That Netanyahu visited a submarine? That we have a submarine? That there is an affair casting a heavy shadow over Netanyahu, concerning national security and integrity, regarding the submarines? Second: Regarding the “fake news a million times bigger”—accusing a former deputy chief of staff of having known about the massacre in advance, if he was not actually involved in it, is that not more serious than the submarines?
Translated from HebrewMore than 200 prominent Israelis signed a letter in June demanding that the government stop the attacks against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank. The signatories included two former prime ministers, more than three dozen retired Army and Air Force generals, the former heads of the nation’s foreign and domestic intelligence services, as well as rabbis, a Nobel laureate and one of Israel’s most revered novelists. In their letter, they called for an end to “Jewish terrorism” and the “ethnic cleansing” underway in the West Bank. And they accused Mr. Netanyahu’s government not just of being negligent in failing to stop it, but of pursuing “a deliberate government policy in which the entire security establishment — including the military, Shin Bet and the police — is knowingly complicit.” https://t.co/dNs2Nw1bJW W\@azamsahmed @natan_oden @ivorprickett via @nytimes
If only they had woken me, Netanyahu says, and everything would have looked different, and when the protocols are opened you will discover there the “generals’ revolt” (he is literally using whole passages from the propaganda narrative of the tyrants of poison). Here, in a conversation with the wonderful @lucyaharish yesterday, about what @YRubovitch and I have already found in the recordings (Jericho Wall, in Netanyahu’s safe) and why the prime minister really fears a commission of inquiry so much.
Translated from Hebrew