Netanyahu's office denies Egypt warned Israel before the October 7 attack

Israel's Prime Minister's Office has rejected as false an allegation it links to a report in the American magazine The Atlantic, which concerns whether Egypt warned Israel ahead of the October 7 attack. In a media statement published on the Israeli government website, the office said the claim had already been denied when it first surfaced and was now being revived in order to "manipulate the Israeli public."

The statement makes three factual assertions. It says Egypt issued an official denial on October 11, 2023 that it had alerted Israel to the coming attack. It says that in the months before October 7, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not meet or speak with Abbas Kamel, who at the time led Egypt's General Intelligence Service. And it says no Israeli intelligence official passed any such warning on to the prime minister. The office closed by saying that "recycled lies will not become true" however often they are repeated.

What the Prime Minister's Office is

The Prime Minister's Office is the government department that supports the Israeli prime minister and issues statements on the prime minister's behalf. The statement is filed on the government portal as a media statement of the 37th Government, the term Israel uses for the current cabinet. According to the page, it was published on 26.09.2026 and updated on 27.09.2026. The page does not say what was changed in the update.

Who Abbas Kamel is

The statement identifies Abbas Kamel as the former head of Egypt's General Intelligence Service, the country's main intelligence agency. Egypt shares a border with Israel and with the Gaza Strip, and its intelligence service has often acted as a channel between Israel and Palestinian factions in Gaza. That role is why any question of an Egyptian warning before October 7 draws attention in Israel. The statement describes Kamel as the chief "then," indicating he no longer holds the post, but it does not say when he left it.

Why the question matters in Israel

October 7 refers to the attack on southern Israel led by Hamas, the Islamist group that controlled Gaza. Questions about what Israeli leaders and security services knew beforehand, and whether warnings were missed or ignored, have been a persistent subject of public debate in Israel. Claims about foreign governments having passed on warnings form one strand of that debate.

The government's position, as set out in this statement, rests on two points: that Egypt itself denied giving any warning shortly after the attack, and that neither a direct channel between Netanyahu and Kamel nor an internal Israeli intelligence route carried such a message to the prime minister.

How the statement frames the report

The office's language is combative. Its title refers to "the lies" in The Atlantic, and the text describes the allegation as recycled. It does not engage with any specific passage, source or piece of evidence from the magazine's reporting, and it does not name the author of the article.

What the reports do not say

This account is based on a single document: the Israeli government's own statement. We have not seen The Atlantic's report, and the statement does not quote it, so the precise allegation being denied is not set out in the material. From the content of the denial, the claim appears to concern an Egyptian warning to Israel about the attack, but the statement does not say whether The Atlantic reported that the warning went to Netanyahu personally, to Israeli intelligence, or through some other route, or who its sources were.

The statement also leaves several questions open. It does not say whether Egypt has commented on the new report. It does not address whether Egyptian officials other than Kamel had contact with Israeli officials other than the prime minister during that period. Its denial that any intelligence official conveyed a warning covers only what reached Netanyahu, not what may have reached intelligence agencies themselves. No response from The Atlantic is included in the material, and no independent organisation's reporting on the exchange was available to us.