Hamas’ military assault on Israel has dominated the news cycle as the two sides appear to be gearing up for what will likely be a bloody conflict. The hostilities have garnered much speculation from members of the chattering class, one of which received criticism for appearing to blame Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for using the incident to distract from his governance.

Shortly after news reports about the attack surfaced, Harvard professor Laurence Tribe chimed in on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, accusing Netanyahu of waging war against Hamas to draw attention away from alleged corruption in his administration.

X users hit back at Harvard professor emeritus Laurence Tribe for tweeting out (and then deleting) a conspiracy theory that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pursuing war against Hamas militants to distract from his own corruption in government. Tribe has now expressed regret for the "ill-informed" statement.

Following Netanyahu’s Saturday statement declaring that Israel is "at war" after the deadly Hamas attack on his country resulting in the death of more than 100 Israelis, the progressive legal scholar posted that the prime minister was "wagging the dog of war" to keep the focus off his own authoritarian behavior.

Multiple prominent X users refused to entertain the theory, and blasted Tribe as an "idiot" who needs to "go commit" himself somewhere. Even liberal firebrand Keith Olbermann had criticism for Tribe’s post, calling it "moronic and indefensible."

On X, Tribe posted: "Is Netanyahu wagging the dog of war to take attention away from his own war on the independent judiciary? Can anyone put that past him?"

Laurence Tribe deleted his “wagging the dog” post about the attack on Israel. pic.twitter.com/DhVBdzsr4U

— Joseph A. Wulfsohn (@JosephWulfsohn) October 7, 2023

Tribe later clarified that he made the post before he understood that Hamas had struck first.

Fox News Digital reached out to Tribe for comment, and he responded with this explanation: 

I sent the tweet in response to Netanyahu’s reported comments before I saw the news of what Hamas had actually done, at which point I immediately deleted the tweet as a clearly premature, ill-informed and inappropriate response to incomplete information.

He added:

I obviously condemn Hamas’s terrorist attacks and unthinkable atrocities against the Israeli people, including the murder and abduction of civilians, in the strongest possible terms and fully support Israel’s right of self-defense, notwithstanding my long-standing condemnation of the Israeli occupation of Gaza and its activities in the West Bank.

Tribe was not the only prominent figure to lay the blame for the attack on Israel. RedState’s Bonchie pointed out that MSNBC had done the same as well.

Andrea Mitchell blames Netanyahu and the Saudis not listening to Biden "There was some concern...the Saudis were so eager for the economic benefits" of normalization and "there has been the most aggressive encroachment into the West Bank by this far-right coalition government" pic.twitter.com/NRLmkJfcjh

— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) October 7, 2023

The assault began early on Saturday morning, as RedState reported.

The militant group Hamas launched attacks on Jerusalem and Tel Aviv early Saturday morning, prompting the Israeli government to declare a "state of war."

The situation is chaotic:

Forces in the country have ordered residents to remain indoors after confirming Hamas militants had 'infiltrated' the country in several locations near the Gaza border in southern Israel.

'The military declares a state of war alert,' it said in a statement. 'In the last hour, the Hamas terrorist organization had begun a massive shooting of rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory, and terrorists infiltrated into Israeli territory in a number of different locations.'

Netanyahu announced that Israel was at war with Hamas and that he was “initiating an extensive mobilization of the reserves to fight back on a scale and intensity that the enemy has so far not experienced” and that Hamas would “pay an unprecedented price.”