Israeli opposition leaders are calling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unfit to serve, alleging that a warning about a planned Hamas attack ahead of October 7, 2023, never reached the country's security leadership. The claim, carried Friday by the account @MarioNawfal, centers on a reported phone call between Netanyahu and the president of the United Arab Emirates.
@MarioNawfal, whose post excerpted the reporting, wrote that politicians are "pissed that Bibi didn't tip off security officials after learning Hamas was planning a major attack on Oct. 7, 2023," and said they allege the prime minister had a call with the UAE's leadership. The account is among several aggregators pushing the story, alongside @clashreport, which pointed to a New York Times confirmation of an earlier Haaretz report.
According to @clashreport, the Times confirmed the Haaretz reporting that Emirati President MBZ warned Netanyahu before October 7 that Hamas was preparing a major attack. The account said the warning never reached Israel's security leadership, citing five former senior Israeli officials. The same post added that minutes from a meeting were referenced, though it did not describe their contents. No independent confirmation of the call or the warning has been produced publicly.
The reaction spread quickly across the aggregator ecosystem. @MarioNawfal framed the story as a domestic political problem for Netanyahu, writing that he "was reportedly BLASTED by Israeli opposition leaders" over the alleged lapse. The word "reportedly" is doing real work there, because the underlying claim rests on unnamed former officials speaking through two news organizations, and neither the prime minister's office nor Emirati officials have confirmed the account on the record.
The controversy lands during Netanyahu's New York trip for the United Nations General Assembly, a visit that has produced its own running confrontations. @CBSNews reported that Netanyahu is "facing mounting criticism abroad as he campaigns for reelection at home, with dozens of delegates walking out of his U.N. speech Thursday." Delegates left the hall as he took the podium, a scene also described by other outlets covering the address.
Yaakov Katz, the former editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post, told @CBSNews that the walkout may play differently inside Israel than outside it. "People look at the hostility and they say, oh, Netanyahu's not popular, people are walking out," Katz said. "Israelis, I think, look at this and they say to themselves, the world is against us no matter what. But thank God we have a leader, in this case Netanyahu, who can stand up to everyone and stick it to them and show them who's right and defend the country."
Katz argued the friction actually benefits the prime minister domestically. "Those types of walkouts, that type of hostility, Mayor Mamdani's threats to arrest Netanyahu, this doesn't hurt Bibi," he said. "This actually helps Bibi among his local audience, among his potential voters."
That brings in New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has emerged as a central figure in the trip. @Reuters described Mamdani as "a popular draw for like-minded politicians and a target for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu" during the week of visiting world leaders. Netanyahu attacked the mayor directly from the UN podium, according to Fox News Digital's live coverage, telling Mamdani, "You can't silence me. You can't silence the truth," and accusing him of distorting facts and embracing Hamas supporters. The Times described the speech as combative, with the prime minister defending Israeli military action across the Middle East and attacking the mayor by name.
The confrontations have not stayed rhetorical. @FoxNews reported that two men climbed out of a Manhattan manhole near the hotel where Netanyahu was planning to stay, and both are now under arrest. The NYPD says twenty-six-year-old Kevin Rodriguez and twenty-five-year-old Samuel Reveron were allegedly caught on surveillance video. The post did not describe what the men were allegedly doing beyond emerging from the manhole, and no motive has been established publicly.
Katz told @CBSNews that the war itself is the deeper problem for Netanyahu's coalition math. "We're three years into this war, there's no clear outcome. Not in Gaza, not in Lebanon, not in Iran," he said. "Now there's an escalation with the Houthis in Yemen. Who knows where that's leading? There's escalations in the West Bank between Jews and Palestinians. There's been violence and people killed just this week."
On the October 27 election, Katz said he does not expect a clean result. "I don't see how he gets to the 60, what needed to form a coalition," he said, adding that if neither side can form a government, the country goes to another election and Netanyahu "gets to stay on as interim prime minister for another six or seven months until the next election is held. So for him, that might be enough. He wants to just stay in power."
Katz also described new tension between Netanyahu and President Trump. "There now clearly is tension and daylight," he said, noting that Netanyahu tried to arrange a meeting while in New York and would have traveled to Washington for it, but the White House did not confirm a time. Katz added that he does not expect the president to intervene against Netanyahu in the Israeli election, and that Netanyahu is hoping for more vocal support from a president who remains popular in Israel.
Katz pointed to Lebanon and Iran as the likeliest wedge. If fighting with Hezbollah resumes and Iran walks away from negotiations, he said, "it will seem that this is because of Israel. That would lead to greater tension." He added that if Israel is attacked, Netanyahu "would face quite a quandary," because not responding before an election "would be seen as weak."
Separately, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow was ready to resume talks with Ukraine after the elections, then pointed to a massive drone attack during Russia's parliamentary vote. In remarks carried by @MarioNawfal, Putin said Ukraine had suspended talks in Istanbul and later signaled readiness to resume them, with Russia suggesting talks could follow the election. "But we all know what happened since then," Putin said, describing strikes in the early hours of September 20 that he said targeted Moscow. He claimed more than sixteen hundred drones were intercepted nationwide, that a school housing a polling station was practically destroyed, and that a father and child were wounded while a territorial election commission head was killed. Next News Network could not independently verify the warning claim attributed to Emirati and Israeli officials, nor the details of the alleged pre-October 7 call.
Our Take
The opposition's case against Netanyahu rests on a warning that has been reported twice and confirmed by no one on the record, and that gap is the whole ballgame. If the Emirati president did warn him and the warning stopped at his desk, that is a governing failure of the first order, and the Israeli public deserves the minutes, not a leak war. But notice what the aggregators are selling: a scandal built on five anonymous former officials, laundered through two newsrooms, then blasted out as though the call had been played on tape. Meanwhile the walkouts at the UN and Mamdani's threats are being folded into the same story as evidence of something, when Katz makes the more honest point: hostility abroad is fuel at home, and Netanyahu knows it. The manhole arrests are a reminder that this trip carried real security exposure for everyone involved. What the story still lacks is the one thing that would settle it, a document. Until that appears, the allegation is political ammunition, and both sides are treating it exactly that way.
