Netanyahu’s October 7 military secretary says the comptroller was given only part of the truth

Avi Gil, who was Benjamin Netanyahu’s military secretary on 7 October 2023, gave his first interview since that day to Israel Hayom and Channel 12, a short version running on Thursday 08 October and a longer broadcast on Channel 12 that evening. He made three separate claims that are worth keeping apart. On the 55-page account Netanyahu submitted to the state comptroller earlier this year, Gil said: “The document submitted to the state comptroller does not reflect what actually happened. It’s part of the truth, but not the whole truth.” He alleged that Netanyahu’s chief of staff tampered with his phone records from 7 October. And asked whether hostages could have been brought back alive, and some survivors returned earlier, he replied simply, “We could have.” The Times of Israel reported his charge that the prime minister passed up clear-cut opportunities because taking them would have risked his political career.

Gil told Ynet that during the war itself, “while we were preparing the ground maneuver, I was approached and told that records were being collected in the Prime Minister’s Office, contrary to regulations. I contacted the attorney general. At the height of the war, stenographic transcripts and protocols were being collected. I didn’t want to accuse anyone. I wanted to stop it.” He insisted any future commission of inquiry work from the original recordings rather than written records, “because I don’t know what was changed,” and framed the interview as “not my truth. It’s the country’s truth.” Netanyahu called the remarks “an attempt to obscure the simple and painful truth about his failure,” and, per the Times of Israel’s liveblog, said Gil “chose not to wake him up” on the morning of the attack. Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party asked Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara to examine whether Netanyahu lied to the comptroller; Avigdor Liberman alleged treason, in the Times of Israel’s characterisation.

The legal arithmetic is less dramatic than the politics. Ynet’s explainer notes that Gil’s account has renewed scrutiny of an existing investigation into former Netanyahu aide Tzachi Braverman, centred on an alleged 11-minute change to a call record, on which prosecutors have yet to decide whether to charge — and that no decision is expected within the coming month, because of the election period. Ynet also records that Gil was confirming, not breaking: he corroborated reporting previously published by Nadav Eyal in Yedioth Ahronoth on the alleged alteration of records at the Prime Minister’s Office. On 10 October the Times of Israel aggregated an unnamed newspaper’s report that Braverman is unlikely to be indicted because it would be hard to disprove his claim of a mistaken timestamp change; that rests on anonymous sources in a publication the aggregation did not name. Gil separately said he knew of no warning to the prime minister from Egypt or the UAE before 7 October.

Assessment: Read this as an argument about custody of the archive rather than about who said what on the morning. Gil’s operative demand — that an inquiry work from tape, not transcripts — presumes the paper record is already compromised, which is a claim no commission exists to test and no prosecutor will resolve before polling day. The election period is doing real work here: it converts a criminal file into a campaign asset for both sides, with no decision point to discipline either. Treat the Liberman framing and the anonymous no-indictment line with equal suspicion; the first is a slogan, the second is unsourced in public. Note too that Gil contradicted the opposition’s Egypt-and-UAE warning narrative, which is the detail least likely to be quoted back.