PM’s ex-military secretary: Netanyahu prioritized political survival when he could have saved hostages’ lives

In a bombshell interview, the man who served as Benjamin Netanyahu’s military secretary on October 7, 2023, charged that the prime minister passed up clear-cut opportunities to bring more hostages home from Gaza alive because doing so would have risked his political career. Discussing cabinet meetings during the war, Avi Gil told Channel 12 on Thursday evening that there were times when Netanyahu opted to preserve his government rather than agree to a deal that would have brought hostages back to Israel, some of whom later died in captivity, but that could have toppled his coalition. Gil acknowledged that leadership requires looking at the full picture, and that “political considerations are also part of the matter.” Then, he added: “Did I think at the time that it was a mistake? Did I think it was right to prioritize the return of hostages? The answer is yes.” In the lengthy interview, Gil made a series of explosive allegations, many of which touched on the critical questions of what Netanyahu knew before October 7, how he acted during the Hamas-led onslaught, and how he made decisions in the months that followed. Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Newsletter email address Get it By signing up, you agree to the terms The ex-military aide, who served in the position from July 2021 to May 2024, also alleged that Netanyahu’s chief of staff tampered with his phone records from October 7. He claimed that the story Netanyahu has told of the lead-up to the devastating attack, including in a formal submission to a state comptroller’s investigation, leaves out crucial details. And he said that in the weeks and months before the attack, Netanyahu was warned repeatedly by all his security chiefs of an impending war. Avi Gil, who was military secretary to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from December 2022 to May 2024, in a Channel 12 interview broadcast on October 8, 2026. (Screenshot) The damning claims, coming 19 days before Netanyahu stands in the first election since October 7, 2023, met a furious denial from the prime minister, who relayed blame for that day’s missteps back onto Gil. Netanyahu’s conduct surrounding October 7 has been at the center of the political campaign, and he has sought to blame the country’s security chiefs for failing to prevent the bloodiest day in Israel’s history. Gil’s remarks to the media were “an attempt to obscure the simple and painful truth about his failure,” Netanyahu said in response to the interview. Advertisement Gil’s claims also prompted outrage of a different kind from Netanyahu’s political rivals: Gadi Eisenkot, the election’s frontrunner, called for a criminal probe into the premier’s alleged lies. Avigdor Liberman, chair of the hawkish Yisrael Beytenu party, accused Netanyahu of treason. “While other brothers and sisters in the border region were slaughtered by Hamas, Netanyahu worked on changing protocols instead of saving them,” Eisenkot wrote on X. “Nothing will save him from the state commission of inquiry we’ll establish after the election.” ‘They could have come back before’ Forty-six of the 251 hostages who were taken in the October 7 attack were abducted alive and died in captivity. When asked on Thursday whether some of them could have been brought back alive, and whether some of those who survived could have been returned earlier, Gil replied simply, “We could have.” Israelis carry coffins symbolizing hostages murdered by the Hamas terror group in Gaza, as they protest in Tel Aviv for the release of remaining captives, September 5, 2024. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90) Gil indicated that Netanyahu caved to pressure from far-right ministers in his coalition who wanted intensified war against Hamas in Gaza and opposed hostage deals and ceasefires. One of those ministers, Itamar Ben Gvir, bragged about quashing hostage deals during the war. Gil was asked whether there were times when Netanyahu had made a decision, only for far-right ministers to then say, “There is no deal,” and for Netanyahu to change course. “Yes,” he said. “Over time, gaps developed between the recommendations of the defense authorities and maybe even the prime minister’s own wishes,” on the one hand, “and the decisions or recommendations of his ministers,” said Gil. Advertisement He was then asked whether, for political reasons, hostages were murdered or died in captivity when it was possible to bring them home alive. “That is accurate,” he said. “They could have come back before.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chairs a cabinet meeting at the Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem on January 22, 2023. Standing next to him is his military secretary Gen. Avi Gil. (Olivier Fitoussi/FLASH90) Pressed further as to whether he was present at a meeting where the prime minister decided in favor of “the government and politics, in other words for his own personal political survival,” over the lives of hostages in Gaza, Gil eventually replied, “Factually, that is exactly what happened.” When asked whether he was prevented from bringing a certain document into a cabinet meeting, causing a hostage deal to fail, he said nothing. The question appeared to reference an allegation, reported last year in The New York Times , that a document with the bullet points of a hostage deal was brought into an Israeli cabinet meeting but was rendered moot when far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich threatened to bring down the government. Accuses chief of staff of tampering with Oct. 7 phone records Gil also accused Netanyahu’s Chief of Staff Tzachi Braverman of tampering with phone records from the morning of October 7 in an apparent bid to rehabilitate Netanyahu’s image. The gathering of meeting minutes from the morning of October 7, 2023, began two or three weeks into the war, Gil told Channel 12. At the end of that month, he said, several individuals approached him to inform him that there was an “unusual” minutes-gathering effort. “This gathering of minutes was done against the regulations,” he said. He recalled turning to the attorney general and asking her to officially make the rules clear in order to stop the practice, which she did. Advertisement Then a stenographer at the Prime Minister’s Office told Gil in person in January 2024 that she was asked to retrieve the record of the phone call he had with Netanyahu on their secure line at 6:40 a.m. on October 7, and that Braverman told her to falsely change the documented time of that first secure call between Gil and Netanyahu to 6:29 a.m. “She came into my office, closed the door and told me everything,” he said. “She understood it was a departure from accepted practice,” he said. “A document had been sent out two months earlier explaining what is and is not permitted… She told me, it is forbidden for me to change it.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sits on one side of a desk, as his chief of staff Tzachi Braverman takes notes at the head of the desk, in a meeting with top security officials: (L-R) Maj. Gen. Ronen Gofman, the premier’s military aide; IDF Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi; then-defense minister Yoav Gallant; Mossad chief David Barnea; and Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, at the IDF’s Kirya headquarters in Tel Aviv, October 2, 2024. (Maayan Toaf/GPO) She noted that the call had been recorded, and was marked 06:40 to 06:44. “If I remember correctly, the change [to the minutes] was carried out by the chief of staff,” he said. “Those are the facts. They cannot be disputed.” “The first thing I remember was wondering why, in January 2024, they were busying themselves with the stenogram of a four-minute phone call on the morning of October 7?” he continued. “To whom is it important? What was in the conversation that made it so important to deal with it?” Asked if such a change was unusual, Gil marveled: “It’s changing a stenogram. It’s changing the truth. Is that unusual? I hope so.” This is not the first time Braverman has been accused of criminal wrongdoing. He faces an indictment for obstruction of justice, fraud and breach of trust in connection with a scandal over the leak of classified documents. Due to those allegations, he has been unable to take up the post of Israel’s next ambassador to the United Kingdom, for which he was designated. ‘Demand the original recordings’ Gil said that upon learning of the attempted tampering, he immediately wrote a handwritten note to the attorney general to update her. “It was important for me to write this down” to counter any subsequent false claims, he said. “This is forgery.” Advertisement Asked whether there may have been other such falsifications, he answered, “It is a fact that they ordered the time of a call to be changed. Were there other such changes? I don’t know.” He added, “I saw a change to a protocol.” He offered a recommendation for whoever eventually investigates the attack: “Don’t rely solely on the written transcripts of things. Demand the original recordings… Listen to what was said.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with Golani soldiers near the border with Gaza on October 19, 2023. (Avi Ohayon/ GPO) Gil surmised that “it is possible” that the change in the time of the conversation was meant to set the stage for insinuations from Netanyahu’s circle that senior officials knew about the attack ahead of time and, in an act of betrayal, intentionally kept it from the prime minister until the attack was underway. You are describing criminal behavior, Gil was told by his interviewers, that harms the state and its security. So why, he was asked, are indictments not being issued by law enforcement authorities? “Ask them,” he replied. “I know the facts,” he said. “And the facts are not disputed. The time of the call was changed. [Or rather], there was an effort to change it, because we caught it. That’s a grave incident, and the fact is, they’re not denying it.” Gil: Security chiefs said war was imminent before Oct. 7 A large portion of the interview dealt with what Netanyahu knew about a potential attack, and when he knew it. There have been numerous reports in recent weeks that warnings came from leaders across the region of an imminent Hamas attack, but Netanyahu has flatly denied those allegations and insisted that his security chiefs assured him war was not in the offing. Gil told Channel 12 that there were repeated warnings from top security officials about an impending war in the weeks and months before the invasion and massacre, though none about the specific scenario that unfolded on October 7, 2023. “For weeks, documents were submitted,” he said. “The security establishment described a reality in which our enemies identify the fissure [in society], identify weakening, and damage to our deterrence.” Israelis opposed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul plan set up bonfires and block a highway during a protest moments after the Israeli leader fired his defense minister, in Tel Aviv, Israel, March 26, 2023. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg) The warnings took place over a bitter public fight around the government’s proposed overhaul of Israel’s judicial system. “Was there a specific, focused warning about a scenario like an attack like this from Gaza? The answer is unequivocally no,” he said. “Did we start to recognize in the security establishment damage to our deterrence, our enemies looking differently at Israel? The answer is unequivocally yes,” he added. “And it was presented at all echelons.” Gil recalls personally delivering a warning to the PM He said he personally facilitated a call to Netanyahu about an impending war from Shin Bet Director Ronen Bar in July 2023, in which Bar formally stated that he was “conveying a warning of war,” as the coalition pushed through the first major piece of legislation in Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul package. “I went to the prime minister in the hospital,” Gil said, referring to a weekend in July 2023 when the premier was hospitalized for purported dehydration, “in order to give him three