Netanyahu's wife alleges coup plot by army bosses against Israel's PM

The wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused top army officials of attempting to orchestrate a coup against her husband.

The accusations were made during a meeting last week with several families of Israelis held captive by resistance fighters in Israel-besieged Gaza, Haaretz newspaper reported on Tuesday.

"Israeli forces are seeking to stage a military coup against my husband," Sara Netanyahu was quoted as saying by the leading Israeli newspaper.

When some family members interrupted, she insisted more than once that "the army brass wants to stage a coup."

According to Haaretz, several army officials were also present at the meeting apart from family members.

Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan was taken hostage on October 7, said in response to the report, "Instead of doing everything to save lives, [Netanyahu] is spreading delusional conspiracies and is busy inciting and sowing division."

"If this is what the Netanyahu family thinks and this is how things are handled, what wonder is it that there's no [hostage] deal and that the country is going up in flames? Today it's already clear that there will be no deal and there will be no revival [for Israel] as long as Netanyahu is in power."

Sara Netanyahu was not the only family member to accuse military leaders. Her son, Yair Netanyahu, made similar accusations earlier this month.

On June 17, Yair accused the military and the Shin Bet security service of "betrayal" during the October 7 Hamas raid that caught Israeli intelligence and military off guard, crushing their image.

"What are they trying to hide? If there was no betrayal, then why are they afraid of external and independent parties investigating what happened?" he wrote on X.

"Why did the army and intelligence chiefs keep claiming that Hamas was deterred? Where was the Air Force on October 7th?" he added.

In that raid that Hamas calls Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, the Palestinian resistance fighters stunned its arch-enemy following near daily Israeli attacks on Al Aqsa Mosque, illegal settler violence in occupied West Bank.

At some places the resistance fighters are said to have gunned down many soldiers as Israel's military scrambled to muster response.

The hours-long attack on Israeli settlements and military sites that were once Arab farms and villages and Israeli military's haphazard response including controversial Hannibal Directive resulted in the killing of more than 1,130 people, Israeli officials and local media say.

Palestinian fighters also took more than 250 hostages and presently 116 remain in Gaza, including 41 who the Israeli army says are dead, some of them killed in indiscriminate Israeli strikes.

Israel has since then killed at least 37,658 Palestinians — mostly women, children and infants –– and wounded 86,237 amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities. Israel has imposed a crippling blockade on Gaza, leaving its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, starving.

Israel, flouting a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire, has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal invasion on Gaza.

More than eight months into the Israeli war, vast tracts of Gaza lie in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water, and medicine.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, whose latest ruling ordered it to immediately halt its military operation in the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.