Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office acknowledged Saturday that the premier’s intelligence officer had received an Israel Defense Forces memo detailing suspicious Hamas activity three hours before the terror group’s October 7, 2023, invasion and onslaught, and didn’t pass it on. The premier’s office argued that this was justified given what it said was the document’s non-urgent framing.

The admission came in response to a Channel 12 report that said the IDF had drafted a document setting out the numerous worrying signs of Hamas activity in Gaza that night and sent it out to the intelligence officers of seven key Israeli leaders, including Netanyahu and then-defense minister Yoav Gallant.

Gallant’s office was unable to reach his intelligence officer, who, therefore, did not receive the document at that time, the report said.

Netanyahu’s intelligence officer and the other five all received the document. But Netanyahu’s officer did not pass the information up the chain, according to the report.

The IDF did not investigate why the material was not passed on, the report said, because its investigations of the October 7 failures, published during the past week, did not touch on the political echelon.

The report quoted the IDF officer who oversaw the IDF’s intelligence investigation, Moshe Schneid, as saying: “I didn’t check what went on there [in the chain of command in the Prime Minister’s Office] because I was very wary of probing the political echelon. I met the prime minister’s intelligence officer several times in the street and I was careful not even to ask him about it.”

The report also quoted outgoing IDF chief Herzi Halevi saying that the IDF did not publicize the fact that the Prime Minister’s Office was alerted to Hamas’s suspicious activity three hours ahead of the invasion “even though this could have helped us in the face of the bad things that are being said about us. We are very responsible and discreet. It’s a shame this is not reciprocated.”

It quoted Halevi adding: “If the prime minister’s intelligence officer was a person of integrity, he should already have told [Netanyahu] that he knew about [Hamas preparations just before the attack] and did not update [Netanyahu]. [The officer] did not do this.”

Netanyahu has repeatedly made clear that he received no specific advance warning ahead of the Hamas attack.

Responding to the report, Netanyahu’s office accused Halevi of trying to shirk responsibility for the October 7 attacks.

“It is very unfortunate that the chief of staff chooses to publicly attack a moral and trustworthy officer in the IDF,” said the Prime Minister’s Office in a statement, “while attempting to shift the responsibility for the October 7 lapse onto his subordinates.”

The intelligence officer received the message along with a report that Hamas was operating as usual and that the IDF Southern Command would hold a discussion in the morning, according to the premier’s office, which said the officer then forwarded the message to Netanyahu’s military secretary Avi Gil but decided not to wake him up as the message did not indicate any urgency.

Netanyahu’s office added that the intelligence officer was not interviewed as part of the IDF investigations and said he was not allowed to attend the presentation of the findings.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu has full confidence in the military secretariat of his office,” his office said.

Netanyahu, who served as premier from 2009 to 2021 and again from early 2023, has adamantly refused to acknowledge any responsibility for the failure to prevent the October 7 onslaught. He has said he received no information about anything out of the ordinary before the attack began.

The IDF’s extensive investigations have found it picked up on signs of unusual Hamas activity, but refused to believe this indicated a planned major attack following a yearslong ruse that convinced the security establishment that Hamas wasn’t interested in war. The army’s chief of staff Halevi will step down in the coming days.