Netanyahu’s own military secretary accuses his office of altering October 7 records

Gil, Netanyahu’s military secretary before and during the 7 October 2023 attack, broke three years of silence in a dual interview excerpted on Thursday — the full version is due Friday. The specific allegation is documentary rather than interpretive: Gil told Channel 12 that Tzachi Braverman, Netanyahu’s chief of staff, instructed a stenographer to change the recorded time of a call on the morning of the attack from 6:40 a.m. to 6:29 a.m. Ynet’s account is more precise about how Gil knows it: a stenographer in the Prime Minister’s Office told him she had been instructed to make the change. Gil also said prewar recommendations for strikes in Gaza were rejected, and confirmed that then-Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar warned Netanyahu of war in July 2023. Haaretz reports he alleges a “pattern of criminal behavior” in the prime minister’s office and urges investigators to demand the full recordings, warning that wartime transcripts may have been altered.

Two things about the sourcing are worth stating plainly. The stenographer is not named and has not spoken publicly, so the central claim is second-hand inside an on-the-record account by a former two-star officer whom Netanyahu himself appointed. And the interview ran in Israel Hayom, the prime minister’s friendliest print outlet, alongside Channel 12. Likud dismissed it as politically motivated propaganda; the Times of Israel liveblog records Netanyahu’s own line, that Gil “chose not to wake him up” on the morning of the attack. Braverman has not answered in his own name. The political escalation took forty-eight hours: on Wednesday’s anniversary, Eisenkot and Yair Lapid were still demanding a State Commission of Inquiry, which Netanyahu opposes, having released a 55-page document submitted to the State Comptroller on 5 February deflecting his role. By Thursday night Eisenkot’s Yashar party had appealed to Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara to open a criminal probe, and Avigdor Liberman was alleging treason.

Assessment: The eleven minutes are not the story; the chain of custody is. An altered timestamp would move the moment Netanyahu was woken relative to the first rocket barrage — but nothing published so far is documentary, and the only person who could make it so has not spoken. Watch three things: whether Friday’s full interview names the stenographer or produces a record, whether Braverman answers under his own name, and how quickly the attorney general responds. Nineteen days before a vote, her silence and her action are equally political. Liberman’s “treason” is campaign language from a man running against the incumbent, and should be read as such. Three years on, no inquiry of any kind has been established.