Netanyahu Accused Of Attempting To Rewrite October 7 Records As Israeli General Breaks Silence
The Missing 11 Minutes: Israeli General Challenges Netanyahu's October 7 Account
Netanyahu Faces Fresh October 7 Questions As Former Military Adviser Breaks Silence
Former military secretary Avi Gil alleges an attempt to change the timing of a crucial phone call, raising new questions about what Israel's prime minister knew during the opening minutes of the Hamas attack.
A former senior Israeli general has accused people inside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office of attempting to alter official records from the morning Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023.
The allegation concerns two telephone calls made just eleven minutes apart, as the scale of the assault on southern Israel was becoming clear.
Retired Major General Avi Gil, who served as Netanyahu's military secretary at the time, claims the prime minister's chief of staff, Tzachi Braverman, sought to change the recorded timing of a conversation.
Gil says he reported the suspected interference to Israel's attorney general after learning about it from a stenographer working inside the Prime Minister's Office.
Netanyahu's Likud party has rejected the accusations, describing them as politically motivated.
The allegations have emerged three years after the deadliest attack in Israel's history, reopening questions about the government's response and the accuracy of its official account.
At the centre of the dispute are two times: 6:29am and 6:40am.
Those eleven minutes could prove important in establishing precisely what Netanyahu knew, when he learned it and which instructions he gave as the attack unfolded.
Why The Eleven Minutes Matter
On the morning of 7 October 2023, Hamas-led militants launched a coordinated assault on southern Israel, firing rockets, breaching the Gaza border and attacking military positions and civilian communities.
As the situation developed, Gil contacted Netanyahu to inform him of the escalating emergency.
According to Gil, their first telephone conversation occurred at approximately 6:29am.
A second conversation followed at 6:40am.
The significance of that interval lies in the information available to Israel's military leadership.
Gil says he received additional intelligence between the two calls. Details unavailable during the first conversation were passed to Netanyahu during the second.
If the official chronology incorrectly placed those details into the earlier conversation, it could create a misleading picture of the government's response.
A record showing Netanyahu issuing informed instructions at 6:29am would tell a different story from one showing that certain intelligence had only reached him eleven minutes later.
The difference could affect assessments of the prime minister's decisions, the conduct of his advisers and the actions of military and intelligence officers.
Gil has suggested that altering the chronology could serve one of two purposes.
It might portray Netanyahu as having taken decisive command from the earliest moments of the attack.
Alternatively, it could support an argument that other officials possessed important information earlier than they disclosed.
Those are Gil's suspicions about possible motives. They have not been established as facts, and there is no verified finding that Netanyahu personally ordered the falsification of a record.
The Allegation Against Netanyahu's Chief Of Staff
Gil says his concerns about the handling of official records began within weeks of the attack.
He noticed what he considered an unusually extensive effort by people associated with the Prime Minister's Office to gather documents and transcripts relating to government activity.
Concerned about how those records might be handled, he contacted Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara to seek clarification about the rules governing official transcripts.
Several months later, according to Gil, a stenographer informed him that Tzachi Braverman had instructed her to change the recorded time of a conversation from the morning of 7 October.
Gil considered the alleged request sufficiently serious to report it to the attorney general.
Braverman subsequently came under police investigation over suspected alterations to the telephone records and was questioned in connection with the matter.
Previous accounts of the investigation also described an alleged attempt to change the recorded time of Netanyahu's first briefing from 6:40am to 6:29am.
The exact sequence of the original calls and the entries that investigators examined is therefore central to resolving the dispute.
A request to correct an inaccurate timestamp would not automatically constitute misconduct. Deliberately changing a correct record to create a false chronology would be a different matter.
Investigators would need to establish what the original records showed, what alteration was requested and whether any change was actually made.
Being questioned by police does not establish criminal wrongdoing.
Netanyahu's Party Rejects The Accusations
Likud has responded by accusing Gil of participating in a politically motivated campaign against Netanyahu.
The party maintains that the prime minister received no advance warning of the Hamas assault and that senior security officials had repeatedly assessed Hamas as deterred from launching a major confrontation.
According to Likud's account, security and intelligence officials detected suspicious developments before the attack but failed to pass crucial information to the prime minister.
The party argues that Netanyahu's response could have been different had those warnings reached him.
That position reflects a longstanding dispute over responsibility for Israel's failure to anticipate and prevent the assault.
Military and intelligence organisations have faced serious criticism for failing to recognise Hamas's preparations, assess intelligence accurately and defend communities near Gaza.
Netanyahu's critics argue that political leadership must also be examined, including the government's security priorities and the decisions taken before the attack.
Gil's allegations add a separate issue: whether the records used to assess those decisions accurately reflect events.
The allegations against Braverman do not themselves establish that Netanyahu knew about, authorised or participated in any attempted alteration.
A Wider Dispute Over What Netanyahu Knew
The controversy is not limited to telephone calls made after the attack began.
Israel has also witnessed disputes over the information presented to Netanyahu during the months leading up to 7 October.
In February 2026, Netanyahu released a lengthy document setting out his account of security discussions, warnings and recommendations before the assault.
The document was intended to support his position regarding the intelligence available to him and the advice received from senior defence officials.
Critics challenged the way the material was selected and presented.
Former Shin Bet director Ronen Bar has disputed Netanyahu's use of official records, arguing that selected extracts can give an incomplete account of wider conversations.
The distinction matters.
A document may contain authentic quotations while still presenting a misleading overall picture if important surrounding material is excluded.
An accurate investigation would need to examine complete meeting records, intelligence assessments, operational recommendations and decisions rather than isolated passages.
The dispute over pre-attack intelligence is separate from Gil's allegation concerning the first minutes of the assault.
One concerns whether senior officials properly understood and communicated the threat.
The other concerns whether the government's response was subsequently documented accurately.
Both form part of the continuing effort to establish responsibility for the failures of 7 October.
The Egyptian Intelligence Warning Question
Gil has also raised questions about an Egyptian intelligence visit to Israel shortly before the Hamas attack.
He described an Egyptian intelligence aircraft arriving in Israel and remaining for a relatively brief period.
The retired general suggested that the visit warranted further investigation because the public does not know enough about its purpose or the information exchanged.
However, Gil acknowledged that he did not know whether an explicit warning of the Hamas assault had been delivered.
That uncertainty is essential.
The reported presence of an Egyptian intelligence delegation would not, by itself, establish that Egypt warned Netanyahu about the precise attack being prepared.
Nor would it prove that actionable intelligence was deliberately concealed.
The Prime Minister's Office has previously denied claims that Netanyahu received advance warning from Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel.
Establishing what happened would require reliable evidence of the visit, the identities of those involved, the communications exchanged and whether any warning reached Israeli decision-makers.
Gil's comments raise questions but do not resolve them.
Three Years After October 7, Questions Remain
The Hamas-led assault on 7 October 2023 killed approximately 1,200 people in Israel and resulted in the abduction of 251 hostages.
Militants attacked border communities, military installations, roads and the Nova music festival, exposing severe weaknesses in Israel's security arrangements.
The disaster prompted extensive investigations into intelligence failures, operational readiness and the military response.
For a fuller account of the assault and its consequences, the
events of October 7 and Israel's security failures
provide the wider chronology.
The attack also triggered a devastating war in Gaza, causing enormous Palestinian casualties, displacement and destruction.
Three years later, the struggle over how the original attack should be investigated remains politically contentious.
Gil says he had hoped to provide his account to a state commission of inquiry.
Such a commission would have the authority to examine evidence, question senior officials and reconstruct the decisions that preceded and followed the attack.
Netanyahu and his political allies have resisted calls for the particular form of independent state inquiry demanded by many bereaved families and government critics.
Gil's decision to speak publicly reflects his concern that the complete account has still not emerged.
His intervention comes ahead of Israel's parliamentary election scheduled for 27 October 2026, when the government's record on national security is expected to feature prominently in political debate.
The dispute over historical records also occurs against a wider background of diplomatic tensions involving Netanyahu's government, including
Britain's confrontation with Israel over East Jerusalem
.
Those diplomatic issues are separate from Gil's accusations, but illustrate the continuing political consequences of the conflict that followed 7 October.
Could The Original Recordings Reveal What Happened?
Gil has called for an investigation that examines original audio recordings rather than relying exclusively on written transcripts.
That distinction could be decisive.
A transcript is a written representation of a conversation. It can contain errors, omissions or subsequent corrections.
An authenticated recording, supported by reliable timestamps and preservation records, may allow investigators to reconstruct what was actually said.
But recordings alone would not answer every question.
Investigators would also need to establish who possessed particular intelligence at each stage, whether it was passed to Netanyahu and what actions followed.
They would need to determine whether anyone requested changes to the records, whether those requests were legitimate and who authorised any amendments.
The original timestamps, recording systems, document histories and testimony of those present could all be relevant.
A careful inquiry would also distinguish between errors arising from confusion during a rapidly developing emergency and deliberate efforts to misrepresent events afterwards.
The difference is significant because inaccurate records do not automatically prove intentional falsification.
And intentional misconduct by one official would not automatically establish responsibility by another.
Gil's public account has intensified scrutiny, but the underlying documentary evidence remains essential to deciding what occurred.
What Happens Next?
Gil's fuller interview is expected to be published over the coming weekend, potentially providing more detail about the conversations, his dealings with the attorney general and his concerns over the government's handling of records.
The existing investigation into the alleged alteration of documents may also help establish whether the stenographer's account can be corroborated.
For the families of those killed and abducted, the unresolved questions concern more than political reputations.
They concern why Israel failed to protect its citizens and whether the institutions responsible have provided an accurate account of their conduct.
Netanyahu's party rejects the allegations and maintains that the prime minister was not warned of the approaching attack.
Gil insists that the public has not been given the complete picture.
The evidence capable of distinguishing between those positions may lie in the original recordings, documents and testimony that have yet to be examined together in a comprehensive public inquiry.
