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. 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. As fighting still flared in southern Israel, Netanyahu’s team then briefed sympathetic influencers, telling them that it was the generals who were at fault for Israel’s worst-ever defense failure. Later in the war, Netanyahu’s team ordered archivists to alter the official records of his earliest phone calls on Oct. 7.
