Gaza Genocide · updated 1h ago · 3 min read
Yoav Gallant Says Shin Bet Misread Hamas Message Before October 7 Prison “Earthquake”
Hamas warned Shin Bet of an impending 'earthquake' in prisons before Oct 7, 2023. Intelligence assessed the message as related to prisoners/hostage talks, not an immediate attack.
Who Gallant says he learned about foreign warnings from.
6 of 8 outlets skipped it: gallant says Netanyahu kept him out of US-sensitive discussions.
Haaretz was read line by line by the Watchdog: 6.6. See the score →
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The Times of Israel
“He says he has been hearing about those warnings ‘from the media’ and was not informed of them at the time.”Read the original ↗
Haaretz
“Former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Sunday that he first learned through recent media reports”Read the original ↗
Shows attribution of Gallant’s knowledge source as media reporting, not briefings.
Message, misread, and blame
Former Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant accused intelligence agencies of failing to interpret a message he said arrived indirectly from Hamas through the Shin Bet before the events of October 7, 2023. Gallant told Israeli Army Radio that the indirect message spoke of an imminent "earthquake" in the Palestinian prisoners file and that Hamas would shake the prisons, but he did not indicate how the message arrived. Gallant said the Shin Bet assessment and the military intelligence unit (Aman) at the time linked the message to the kidnapping of Israeli Elizabeth Tsurkov in Iraq, who was released in September 2025.
Channel 12 reported that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar sent weeks before October 7 a brief and "unusual" message to Israel stating that a "tsunami" was expected in the prisons, and it said Israeli intelligence studied the message but adopted an interpretation pointing in a different direction. Gallant also said he was dismissed from his post by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in November 2024, following what he described as a "trust crisis that made it impossible to continue managing the war this way."
Warnings before Oct. 7
The Atlantic report described Abbas Kamel, then head of Egyptian intelligence, traveling to Israel less than two weeks before the October 7 attack and warning that Hamas appeared to be "staging for a big attack." Netanyahu’s office denied the report, calling the allegation false and stating it was rejected at the time and is now being "recycled to manipulate public opinion in Israel." IsraJ said Netanyahu’s office categorically rejected the revelations published by The Atlantic and reacted, "This is a false claim," while it accused the American magazine of recycling a version already denied.
IsraJ added that the Atlantic said a chartered Cessna aircraft tied to Egyptian intelligence landed at Ben-Gurion Airport on September 26, 2023, and would have remained in Israel for only 67 minutes before departing for Cairo. Gallant told Army Radio that he learned of warnings reportedly given by Emirati and Egyptian officials to Israel "from the media for the first time," and he said, "This did not happen to my knowledge, and it was not managed by officials under my command."
Political stakes and Gaza war
Opposition leader Yair Golan accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of ignoring warnings ahead of the events, and Golan wrote on X that Netanyahu had received "every warning in the world" before October 7 but "chose to dismiss them." Golan said he would push for a state commission of inquiry, and he argued, "The first decision we make in the next government will be to establish a state commission of inquiry into the failures of all the systems, foremost among them Netanyahu,". The Anadolu Ajansı account said Israel, with American support, began a genocide in the Gaza Strip the following day, and it stated that by Sunday the campaign had killed more than 74,000 Palestinians and injured more than 175,000.
Anadolu Ajansı also said the offensive destroyed about 90 percent of the territory’s infrastructure, and it described the attack on October 7 as launched by Hamas and other Palestinian factions on Israeli military bases and settlements near the Gaza Strip. Gallant’s comments came as Israel’s next general election was described as scheduled for October 27, 2026, and the vote was expected to be shaped by questions over accountability for the October 7 attack and the government’s conduct during the war that followed.