More than three years after Hamas fighters breached Israel’s border on October 7, 2023, a columnist for American Thinker is floating a theory that the country’s military and intelligence leadership deliberately allowed the incursion to unfold in order to politically damage Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — and he says the idea is close to consensus among ordinary Israeli soldiers.
The claim, published by W.A. Eliot in an October 18, 2026 column, is presented explicitly as rumor rather than established fact. Eliot writes that “rumors are rife in Israel” that the attack was “made possible thanks to a leftist plot to destroy Netanyahu,” and he builds his case largely on the account of a relative he identifies as the equivalent of a captain in the Israeli army.
The core allegation
According to Eliot, his relative argues that Israeli army leaders — and possibly intelligence chiefs — who are generally left-leaning politically permitted the incursion so that Netanyahu, who he says knew nothing about it at the time and whom those leaders despise, would be blamed and lose electoral support.
Where the alleged plotters miscalculated, in Eliot’s telling, was scale. He writes that they envisioned a smaller attack that would kill a moderate number of soldiers and civilians, not a full-scale invasion producing mass casualties, atrocities, and hostage-taking. That gap between expectation and outcome, he argues, is what would explain the questions that still surround the attack: how it penetrated so deeply, and why Israel’s response was so slow and disorganized. Eliot allows that complacency about border incursions might account for some of it, but says it does not answer those larger puzzles.
The column also cites a specific piece of evidence: a recording, recently released, that prompted a wounded Golani fighter, Shalom Shitrit, to speak publicly. In an interview with journalist Ayala Hasson, Shitrit asked who gave the order that soldiers were not to approach the fence until 9 a.m. on October 7. According to the quoted remarks, Shitrit said he still does not know what happened that day, that he had thought his memory was faulty, and that the recording’s release made him want to understand it.
The writer anticipates the obvious objection
Eliot knows the first question readers will ask: how could so many people in the know stay silent for years? He addresses it by analogy, pointing to the Trump-Russia collusion investigation, which he describes as a plot involving Obama, Biden, cabinet members, Hillary Clinton’s campaign, the DNC, some members of Congress, DOJ and FBI leaders and agents, and foreign politicians and operatives — all of whom, he says, either participated or knew and said nothing.
He credits an outgoing NSA director with privately revealing FISA unmasking abuses to Trump, and cites efforts by former Congressman Devin Nunes and now-FBI Director Kash Patel to uncover the investigation’s origins. In Eliot’s account, Trump’s first administration and his reelection prospects were hobbled by that episode and by the silence surrounding it — which he offers as proof that large conspiracies can hold together.
The columnist goes further, asserting that his relative, who he says has “the pulse of the Israeli army,” claims the notion that army leaders plotted against Netanyahu is accepted almost unanimously by rank-and-file soldiers, including captains, and by many citizens. Eliot himself frames it conditionally: “If true, call it the Israeli version of the Trump-Russia collusion plot.”
An ongoing fight over blame
What makes the column more than a historical argument is its claim about the present. Eliot says the plot is “ongoing,” noting that some leftists have insisted Netanyahu was warned in advance and did nothing — an assertion he says “apparently has just been debunked,” without detailing the evidence for that characterization.
He closes with an appeal that does not depend on the truth of the conspiracy theory: whatever one thinks of Netanyahu, he writes, the prime minister should not lose an approaching election because of a false narrative. If the plotters are guilty, Eliot argues, they should be exposed and court-martialed or tried and punished for the harm done.
The piece is a reminder of how contested the accounting for October 7 remains inside Israel. The failure of intelligence and military readiness that day has been the subject of intense official scrutiny, and the question of who bears responsibility — and whether it extends beyond negligence — is now entangled with the country’s electoral politics. Eliot’s contribution is to give voice to a theory that, by his own admission, rests on rumor, a relative’s assurances, and an analogy to American conspiracy claims rather than on documented evidence.
He does not name the officers he suspects, identify the intelligence officials involved, or point to any specific communication, order, or document beyond the recording referenced in the Shitrit interview. Nor does the column address the possibility that the 9 a.m. instruction had an operational rationale unrelated to politics. Those omissions matter, because the allegation is extraordinary: that senior commanders knowingly sacrificed Israeli lives to win an election.
For now, the claim remains what Eliot calls it — a rumor with wide currency among some Israelis, offered as an explanation for a day that still defies easy accounting, and advanced in the hope that, if true, it will be proven and punished before voters go to the polls.
Source: www.americanthinker.com — https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/10/is-this-the-real-explanation-behind-october-7/