Fred Slater

These propaganda campaigns from terror-apologists are exhausting. A few things: The entire Haaretz (which has been among the worst sources of misinformation and propaganda during the war) report is based on anonymous sources, mostly from the Arab world, and has no supporting evidence. Much of it is clearly not believable. There are two central “bombshell” claims. 1) Netanyahu was warned by the UAE President about a coming Hamas action in a phone call and did not pass it along to his intelligence chiefs. Several points: - Netanyahu’s office denies they even had a phone call during the named period. UAE hasn’t confirmed it either. - The warning was very vague. It does not claim to have had any specifics related to date or what the plan would be. Hamas would launch escalations (usually rocket barrages) constantly so such a warning would not necessarily raise red flags. It certainly wouldn’t mean Israel should expect a 10/7 unprecedented style attack. There is other evidence to suggest they should have had better warning and reacted quicker, but not that anyone knew about the specific date or attack plan. In fact, even senior Hamas leaders outside Gaza seemed to be in the dark on the specifics beforehand. - None of that somehow exonerates the people who committed the horrendous crimes that day. Who invaded villages, burned down houses, murdered families, raped women, kidnapped innocents etc The attempt to shift the blame from the perpetrators to the victims is despicable and clearly intentional, whatever failures that the Israeli government had. 2) The second claim being that there was an attempt to somehow offer the release of all the “civilian hostages” is obviously absurd and makes no sense. It only serves those looking to spin up lies to cover for genocidal terrorists - Why would they offer to immediately return people they just intentionally took in a coordinated effort as hostages? - If they wanted to return them, why didn’t they do so? They ended up murdering many of them - It also undermines the entire Hamas strategy, which wasn’t new. Of using hostages to secure the release of terror prisoners in Israel. Which is what they eventually did. - There was a more credible suggestions that Hamas offered to release some hostages after if Israel promised not to go into Gaza, but that is an insane hostage demand for a group that just launched a war by murdering 1200 people. Starting war has consequences. Anyways, this is clearly not a believable claim with no credible sourcing… highlighted in service of an effort by people like Mehdi to provide cover for murderous terrorists he spends much of his time trying to defend via whataboutism and similar deflections.