Netanyahu to sue Haaretz over UAE Oct 7 warning report

Where Diplomacy Meets News

Netanyahu to sue Haaretz over UAE Oct 7 warning report

September 9, 2026

DUBAI,— Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that he will sue the newspaper Haaretz for libel over a report claiming the leader of the United Arab Emirates warned him of an imminent Hamas attack just days before the October 7, 2023 assault on Israel.

Netanyahu’s office said the prime minister has instructed his lawyers to file the lawsuit against Haaretz, reporter Shlomi Eldar and other unnamed parties connected to the story.

The Haaretz report claimed that UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed personally alerted Netanyahu about the coming attack roughly a week and a half before it took place.

The prime minister’s office described the report as entirely fabricated.

It said there had been no contact of any kind between Netanyahu and the UAE government from the start of September 2023 through October 7, the day Hamas Islamist fighters launched their deadly attack on Israel.

According to the statement, a review of the prime minister’s phone records, along with entry logs for the prime minister’s office, turned up no record showing that any Emirati representative had entered the building at any point during that period.

The prime minister’s office went on to describe the report as part of a deliberate and politically timed scheme, saying it was connected to an election campaign being run by opposition parties on the left.

Officials warned that additional false claims of this nature should be expected in the coming weeks.

The statement also placed blame for failures surrounding the October 7 attack on two former security officials, Ronen Bar and Herzi Halevi.

It claimed that both men had noticed warning signs of the coming assault hours before it began, yet failed to pass that information along to Netanyahu in time for any response.

Haaretz responded to news of the lawsuit by saying it stands firmly behind its original reporting and has no plans to issue a correction or retraction.

For its part, the UAE foreign ministry said it does not comment on media reports or speculation regarding private conversations between government leaders.

The ministry stopped short of directly denying that any such call between the two leaders had taken place.

(With files from The Jerusalem Post, Agencies)