"We are at a historic turning point, we are changing history," claimed the indicted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the opening of his Tuesday (June 17) appearance on Channel 14 with his "messages delivery instrument", Yinon Magal. Immediately afterward, he added: "I said on the second day of the war that we would change the face of the Middle East, and we are doing it." While the first part of the sentence is true, the second is a typical manipulation for Netanyahu, A master of propaganda.

The legend of "the second day" was at the heart of Netanyahu's narrative in his appearance on the propaganda machine known as "channel 14", as part of the aura he cultivates in front of his audience of acolytes and the messianic faction in his coalition. He repeated it again at June 19, in an appearance with another of his admirers, Ayala Hasson, on Kan 11. After being crowned king ("King Bibi") and messenger of God (not unlike trump in the US), Netanyahu now positions himself also as a prophet and fortune teller.

The essence of the legend: Right after the worst failure in Israel's history, the October 7 massacre, when it was surprised and engaged in a campaign that Netanyahu, pale and terrified, defined as existential, he had actually already known that Hamas, Hezbollah, Assad, and Iran would all be defeated - a reality that cannot be called imaginary because no one imagined it.

Such a legend won't hurt the next election campaign, which might come soon if the war against Iran ends successfully and the polls favor him. However, it is based on only one fact, thin and weak, when the truth (if it still interests anyone) is very far from the narrative the Prime Minister is promoting. In fact, even the name Netanyahu gives to the legend, "the second day," is incorrect, because the episode on which he relies occurred on the third day of the war.

The opening part of the Channel 14 appearance was dedicated to marketing the legend: "I want to ask you," Magal recited, "Two days after October seventh, on October ninth, you said 'we are going to change the Middle East.' When you said that, did you know... did you have in mind what was going to happen or did things happen during the war?"

Netanyahu opened with a convoluted monologue and the Mouthpiece Magal tried again: "No, you're not answering if you knew when you said that..." "Did I know exactly what would happen?" Netanyahu recovered, "I can tell you that I knew one thing, that we cannot leave Iran with nuclear weapons, and I thought that entering this war would ultimately bring us to that difficult decision."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu broadcasts a statement from the Kirya in Tel Aviv on the day of the October 7, 2023 massacre (screenshot)

The seeds of the legend, based on a random sentence Netanyahu said on October 9 ("we are going to change the Middle East"), were first scattered to the wind by Netanyahu in December 2024, following a historic event that indeed changed the face of the Middle East, but one that no one predicted and that came as a complete surprise to intelligence agencies in Israel and around the world. The reference is, of course, to the sudden collapse of the tyrannical regime in Syria.

In a statement opening the press conference on December 9 2024, a day after the collapse of Bashar al-Assad's regime and the rebels' seizure of power, Netanyahu said: "On October ninth [2023], two days after the outbreak of the war, I told the heads of municipalities in the south - 'we will change the face of the Middle East.'" Later that month in 2024, he repeated this in a conversation with columnist Elliott Kaufman from the Wall Street Journal.

"The new legend that Netanyahu is weaving is that the story of the last year is not the catastrophic failure but the story of absolute victory," we published at the time on The Seventh Eye, following the publication in the Journal. "An examination of Netanyahu's statements reveals that the truth is very far from the narrative he is now trying to promote."

Six days after the conversation with Kaufman, Netanyahu appeared on Channel 14 for the Hebrew-language premiere of "the legend of the second day. "Did you believe on October seventh that this is what it would look like after a year?" anchor Moti Kastel served up a question that could have been written (and perhaps was indeed written) by Netanyahu's communication advisors. "I didn't just believe, I said on October ninth, I said, we will change the face of the Middle East," Netanyahu replied.

The Facts: He knew absolutely nothing

Like Moshe Dayan and Golda Meir after the Yom Kippur surprise in 1973, Netanyahu too was a shadow of himself in the first days after the surprise that Hamas inflicted and the terrible disaster of the October 7 massacre. These were the days when Zaka teams (Identification, Extraction and Rescue) tried to understand from piles of hundreds of victims' bodies whose hand and foot belonged to whom. Dozens and hundreds of rockets and shells flew daily at the stunned Israeli home front that was hiding fearfully in shelters, and we all feared the worst of all - deterioration into a regional war against Hezbollah in the north and Iran in the east.

Like all of us - Netanyahu also trembled with fear at such a possibility, and rightly so.

In those days, Netanyahu was a broken man whose world had caved in, and all one needs is to look again at his first statements, to be convinced of this. He lost his self-confidence, tried to calculate how to save his political career and his failed government that entered functional paralysis, and surrounded himself with Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, with opposition parliament members Gantz and Eisenkot, and with anyone who could later be claimed by him to be responsible for the failure.

Israel's condition was so horrendous in those days that President Joe Biden feared for the fate of the Jewish state to a degree that forced him to advance American aircraft carriers to the Middle East and open a marathon of diplomatic talks, with European assistance, to signal to Hezbollah and Iran that if they dared to exploit Israel's weakness, the US would have no choice and would start a campaign against them (we all remember the "Don't!").

Billboard with the inscription "DON'T!" on the Ayalon Highway, 11.10.23 (Photo: Avshalom Sassoni)

To manifest this, Biden simply got on a plane and in an unprecedented act landed in Israel, during wartime, on October 18, to clarify how deep his commitment to Israel's future is and to prevent its enemies from getting ideas about launching a military adventure against it. Our situation was that dire.

These were the days and hours in which Netanyahu now claims that he already known he was going to "change the Middle East." If anything, the only change that was on the table in those hours and days was the possibility of Israel's collapse in light of the dysfunction of the IDF, Shin Bet, and branches of the Israeli government - corrupt and degenerate - at whose helm Netanyahu had stood for many years.

There is no doubt that statements about eliminating the Iranian nuclear program have starred for decades in Netanyahu's statements and campaigns, though ironically he, personally, is responsible for the biggest leap of this nuclear program, when he convinced Trump to withdraw from the Vienna agreement. But there is no basis for the claim that already on the third day of the war he foresaw the indescribable collapse of Hezbollah, the enormous surprise of Assad's regime collapse, Trump's election, and the window of opportunities for attacking Iran.

Netanyahu loads this delusional narrative onto a press release sent on October 9, 2023, at 15:23, to the political reporters' covering the Prime Minister's Office, under the headline "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just spoke with heads of municipalities in the south: 'We've only just begun.'"

Prime Minister's Office Spokesperson's Statement from October 9, 2023, on which Netanyahu would later build the "Legend of the Second Day"

Netanyahu spoke that day with the heads of the stricken municipalities, who – both them and their predecessors – had been begging him to topple Hamas for over a decade, while he continued the policy of "Hamas is an asset" and brought heavy disaster upon them and upon Israel. Trying to appease their anger and strengthen their spirit, he included in his words a one-time statement that "we are going to change the Middle East."

Why one-time? Because that evening Netanyahu already gave an official statement that did not include any such Assertion or a hint of it. When Netanyahu wants to convey a message, he knows how to repeat it incessantly, from every possible platform, exactly like the illusion of "absolute victory" last year or "the legend of the second day" now.

If not that evening, Netanyahu would have repeated the message in the next statement or the one after. However, 16 more statements and press conferences, 116 days that are four very media-covered months in the Prime Minister's schedule had passed, before one could encounter a similar statement about tectonic change in the region, except that it was a 180-degree different message, one of reconciliation and brotherhood: "Eliminating Hamas will radiate throughout the Middle East and allow us to expand the circle of peace with our neighbours."