Takeaways From the Times Investigation Into Benjamin Netanyahu

When Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, setting off the war in the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political career seemed doomed. Nearly two years later, the war is still going, and Netanyahu has assumed a position of rare domestic strength.

Our six-month investigation, containing many details that have never been previously reported, tells the behind-the-scenes story of how Netanyahu survived and then prospered as the war dragged on. The article brings readers to Netanyahu’s hospital ward in July 2023, to his home in the minutes after the Oct. 7 attack began, to the Israeli military headquarters in the days that followed and inside several cease-fire negotiations and Israeli cabinet discussions throughout 2024 and 2025.

Through interviews with more than 110 officials in Israel, the United States and across the Arab world, as well as a review of dozens of government records and other documents, we reveal how Netanyahu’s actions first made Israel more vulnerable to the October disaster and then helped to prolong and expand the ensuing war. Unexpectedly, the war’s expansion allowed Israel to defeat Hezbollah and bruise Iran. But its extension in Gaza brought relentless misery for Palestinians, led to the deaths of Israeli hostages and allowed Netanyahu to defer a political reckoning.

Here are five takeaways from the investigation.

Before Oct. 7, Netanyahu ignored repeated warnings about a potential attack.

As Netanyahu convalesced in his pajamas in the hospital in July 2023, a senior general brought him a troubling intelligence assessment. The report warned that Israel’s enemies, including Hamas, had taken note of the country’s domestic turmoil, set off by Netanyahu’s divisive plan to weaken the judiciary, and were preparing an attack.

Netanyahu ignored this and other warnings, and his government went ahead with the overhaul, passing a law hours later that limited the judiciary’s power, setting off more unrest. Two days later, Hamas’s leaders once again noted the turmoil in Israel — and decided the time was right to proceed with a long-planned attack.

Netanyahu deflected responsibility and tried to blame defense officials.

Minutes after the attack began in October 2023, at the nadir of his political career, Netanyahu was already planting the seeds for his personal survival act. “I don’t see anything in the intelligence,” Netanyahu said in one of his first phone calls that day. It was his first deflection of blame and an early hint of how Netanyahu would try to prolong his political life by blaming the security and intelligence chiefs for failing to prevent the attack.