Isaac Herzog
Role at the time: President of Israel, in an interview on Kan News
Statement summary
In a Kan News interview, President Isaac Herzog said, in Hebrew, that the UAE president spoke with him several months before October 7, 2023 about Israel's judicial dispute and expressed concern about the situation. He said this was outside the context of any warning that may or may not have been given to the prime minister, which he called the heart of the dispute.
“The article mentioned that the president of the Emirates, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, known as MBZ, spoke with me and expressed concern about the situation. And it was important to me to explain that this is outside the context of any warning that may or may not have been given to the prime minister, which is, after all, the heart of the dispute ... He spoke with me explicitly, several months before October 7, about the legal dispute that is tearing Israeli society apart, at the height of the protests and demonstrations (Translated from Hebrew. Original: בתוך המאמר הוזכר שנשיא האמירויות, שייח' מוחמד בן זאיד, המכונה MBZ, שוחח איתי והביע דאגה על המצב. והיה לי חשוב להסביר שזה מחוץ לקונטקסט של התרעה כלשהי שאולי ניתנה לראש הממשלה ואולי לא, שזה הרי לב הוויכוח ... הוא דיבר איתי כמה חודשים לפני 7.10 בצורה מפורשת על הוויכוח המשפטי שקורע את החברה הישראלית, בתקופת שיא המחאות וההפגנות)”
Kan News article on President Isaac Herzog's interview with Tal Berman on the Kan evening news, given after Haaretz reported that Herzog had also spoken with Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed. We also checked the quoted passage against the audio of the interview on Kan's YouTube channel.
Why we used this label
The reference point is whether Netanyahu received the reported warning from the UAE president and failed to relay or act on it. Herzog describes whether a warning was given to the prime minister as the heart of the dispute and expressly leaves it aside, so we used explicitly declines rather than a label that would assign him a view on it.