Israel’s chief of military intelligence has done something remarkable for a contemporary public figure: he has resigned for failing to adequately do his duty. Major General Aharon Haliva announced his resignation yesterday, saying he took full responsibility for the failures which led up to Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel.
On one level, this was surely inevitable. The 7 October atrocities constituted the worst single assault on Israel in its history and the biggest killing of Jews since the Holocaust. Haliva’s culpability — and it is far from his alone — is undoubted.
The more time passes the more it becomes clearer that, for whatever reason, senior Israeli military and intelligence officials missed — or perhaps more accurately ignored — multiple warning signs, and indeed warnings, of what was coming.
And that was just beforehand. When the attacks happened, it took the IDF several hours to respond — this in a country so small that it can be crossed lengthways in half a day. The failures are egregious and manifold. Surely, there should now be a reckoning.
But many Israelis I speak to are not certain it will come. Israel’s government is egregiously dysfunctional and led by a megalomaniac who was happy to tear the country apart so he could stay in power. Benjamin Netanyahu has brought genuine extremists into his cabinet, such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, and is so terrified of losing their support — and with it the coalition that keeps him as prime minister — that good governance is effectively subordinated to their will.
After the war is finished, or at least declared finished, or the violence finally just ebbs away, there will be a colossal inquiry into all of this. Beyond Haliva, the heads of the IDF and Shin Bet, the country’s internal security service, will both have serious questions to face. Both accepted responsibility soon after 7 October, but will stay in place until the end of the war. Then there is the man who, as national leader, bears ultimate responsibility: Netanyahu.
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