Israel intelligence chief quits over Oct 7 raid
THE head of Israel’s military intelligence resigned yesterdayafter taking responsibility for failures leading to the Oct 7 massacre in which some 1,200 Israelis died, most of them civilians.
Major General Aharon Haliva is the first high-ranking official to step down in the wake of the Hamas attack but others are expected to follow.
His resignation comes amid an ongoing Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) investigation of its role in the most serious breach of security since the Yom Kippur war exactly 50 years before.
In his resignation letter, Major Gen Haliva, who served in the IDF for 38 years, took his share of responsibility for failing to prevent the attack.
“The intelligence division under my command did not live up to the task we were entrusted with,” he wrote. “I carry that black day with me ever since. Day after day, night after night, I will forever carry with me the terrible pain of the war.”
Although the IDF made serious errors, most notably ignoring warnings given by its female spotters in the days and hours leading up to the attack, few doubt the bigger errors were strategic and came from further up.
In an apparent nod to this, Major Gen Haliva’s resignation letter called for the establishment of a state investigative committee “that can investigate and find out in a precise manner all the factors and circumstances that led to the difficult events”.
Any investigation is likely to examine how the Israeli government enabled Hamas in Gaza in the years before the attack to become a foil to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.
It will also consider how the wider intelligence community came to the view that Israel had successfully “deterred” the terrorist group from launching a major assault on its southern border.