Abbas Kamel

to reveal that with documented facts, like the UAE head of state, Mohammed bin Zayed, he's called MBZ colloquially, he informed personally Netanyahu that attack of this caliber was coming in the days prior to October 7th.

We know that the Egyptians, through their head intelligence official, Abbas Kamel, he's since retired, but he personally warned Netanyahu three days in advance an attack from Hamas was coming against Israel.

Patrol soldiers in the IDF, female patrol soldiers put to their higher ups that they were organizing.

Elite forces were coming out and practicing.

They were destroying cameras and surveillance equipment, and they told their higher-ups, and it was essentially dismissed.

Then you had the top intelligence official in Egypt, Abbas Kamel, meet with Netanyahu, I believe, three days in advance of this attack, and he told Netanyahu the same.

Disregarded completely.

And then the most recent news is that the head of the UAE, Mohammed bin Zayed, known as MBZ colloquially, warned the prime minister of Israel that this attack is coming.

On the 26th of September, there was a report in the news magazine The Atlantic, this time about Egypt warning Israel.

Now, the magazine claimed that the then chief of Egyptian intelligence, a man called Abbas Kamel, had flown to Israel in September 2023, but it's not clear who he spoke to when he landed.

The Atlantic reports it spoke to a former Israeli official later briefed on the visit, and that the message was, quote, "If you don't change course, Gaza is going to blow up in your faces." [upbeat music] Now, Benjamin Netanyahu's office said in response that the reporting was false and said that on October the 11th, 2023, Egypt officially denied that it had warned Israel of the October 7th attack and that the claims have been, quote, "recycled to manipulate the Israeli public." Two days later, on the 28th of September, there was even more.

The Wall Street Journal, not a left-leaning newspaper, published a report with further detail on the alleged warnings from Egypt.

The Journal said that according to Arab government officials, there were three increasingly urgent warnings and that the final one came just days before the attack.

Netanyahu strongly denied all claims that Egypt had warned Israel.

He said that he, quote, "Did not meet or speak with Abbas Kamel and that no Israeli intelligence source conveyed an Egyptian warning to him." We should say that all of these reports in Haaretz, in The Atlantic, in the Wall Street Journal, are based on claims from unnamed sources and haven't been verified by the BBC.

And Netanyahu, as I mentioned, is suing various Israeli news organizations.

It was not, it was not a, an end run.

And as we started to work on it in twenty twenty-two, uh, I mean, I have a, a scene in the book, Aviv, where, uh, President Biden is sitting with Abbas in Bethlehem, and he's on-- he's about to go to Saudi Arabia.

Um, and he says to Abbas, "Hey, look," like, uh, he had just seen Lapid, who was the prime minister at the time.

Uh, and he said to Lapid before they went out to the cameras, you know, Joe Biden is a, is a, believes in his, in his soul two states is really the only answer, as difficult as it might be, as difficult it might be to define.

Uh, that has to be the path we're heading on.

If you don't say it as the prime minister, I'm gonna think you're a phony." Biden used this word a lot with w-with leaders.

I, uh, "If you don't do XYZ, you're gonna be, you're a phony." And Lapid went out and in a Q&A said, "I, I continue to believe in two states," and he repeated that at the UN General Assembly.

So when, when Biden is sitting with Abbas, he says, "Hey, look, I know how hard this is, but I'm gonna go to Saudi Arabia, and I'm gonna try to work on this deal.

Two days later, senior Israeli defense figures held an urgent discussion on Sinwar's threat.

At the end of September, Egypt's then intelligence chief, Abbas Kamel, came to Israel reportedly to deliver a warning that Hamas was preparing for something big.

Repeated warnings, repeated inaction.

As I documented this pattern in investigatory essays in late twenty twenty-three and eventually in The Fall of Israel, many of these disclosures had been known since late fall twenty twenty-three, including warnings from the Israeli lookouts that were dismissed as routine training in Gaza.

Now, we had concerns over Rafah and how the Israelis would handle it, which we were discussing with them privately and extensively, but the Israelis were trying to set up a choice for Sinwar.

I actually have a s- I have a part of the book where I am sitting there with Abbas Kamel, the Egyptian intel chief, and Ronen Bar, where Ronen tries to really put this on the table.

Ronen is the head of the Shin Bet, so he's part of the Israeli team.

Yeah.