Exclusive: Israel Military Purge Escalating, Will Topple More Major Officials
‘Avalanche’ of exits to include defense minister, IDF commander, Shin Bet chief, sources tell SpyTalk
UPDATED:
A major purge of senior Israeli military and intelligence officials is underway over their failure to prevent the devastating Oct. 7 Hamas attack.
On Monday, Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva, the head of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) intelligence branch, resigned. He’s the first senior Israeli official to step down for failing to prevent the assault, in which Hamas militants killed some 1,200 Israelis and took more than 250 others hostage in the worst terrorist attack in Israel’s history.
But he won’t be the last. As military investigators deepen their internal probe into the events surrounding the Oct. 7 attack, many others in the IDF’s intelligence branch, as well as Israel’s Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency, are expected to leave their posts in disgrace, knowledgeable Israeli sources told SpyTalk.
“The intelligence directorate under my command did not live up to the task we were entrusted with,” Haliva wrote in his anguished resignation letter. “I carry that black day with me ever since, day after day, night after night. I will carry the horrible pain of the war with me forever.”
Haliva’s resignation is expected to set off an avalanche of departures from the top echelons of Israel’s military and intelligence establishments, these sources say. Others who are expected to resign in the following months include Defense Minister Yoav Gallant; Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzl Halevi, the IDF’s top commanding officer; and Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar. All have publicly accepted responsibility for the Oct. 7 failure. But have continued to serve amid the demands of Israel’s war against Hamas, now in its sixth month.
“It’s not clear how quickly it will happen, but I’m sure more resignations will come,” Yossi Kucik, who served as chief of staff for former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, said in a telephone interview.
\According to Amos Harel, the military correspondent for the daily Ha’aretz, others who played a role in the failures of Oct. 7 are poised to leave their posts, including several senior Shin Bet officials, the current and previous commander of IDF’s Southern command, the head of the IDF’s Operations Division, and the commander of the Gaza Division
But a former senior government official says that lawyers for these officers are urging them to remain in their posts until the current ruling rightwing coalition leaves office and a new, more moderate government takes office.
“The problem is that if these people resign now, Bibi will replace them with radical rightwing ass-kissers,” the former senior official told SpyTalk, using Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s nickname. The former official asked to remain anonymous to discuss sensitive matters.
Israel’s next elections are in 2026, but many expect Netanyahu’s government will fall before then, forcing a new vote.
Eavesdropping Unit Purge
Earlier this month, the commander of Israel’s vaunted Unit 8200, the IDF’s powerful electronic and cyber surveillance agency, comparable to the U.S. National Security Agency, was forced to step down.
The resignation of Brig. Gen. Yossi Sariel, whose identity had been a closely guarded secret, followed an April 5 report in Britain’s Guardian newspaper, which revealed that a book about the military uses of artificial intelligence that Sariel published on Amazon in 2021, using only the author’s initials “Y.S.”, had left a digital trail that led to a private Google account created in his name. The paper said the trail also revealed Sariel’s “unique ID and links to the account's maps and calendar profiles.”
An IDF spokesman confirmed the unmasking of Sariel, describing the book’s exposure of the spy chief’s identity as “a mistake.” But even before this security lapse, Unit 8200 under Sariel’s command had come under fire for its failure to foresee and prevent the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.
Also on Monday, Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fox, the commander of Israel’s central command, which includes the occupied West Bank, notified his superiors that he would step down at the end of his three-year term in August. According to Israeli press reports, Fox said he told close associates that he saw himself as part of the IDF General Staff’s failures on Oct. 7 and was therefore honor-bound to step down.
Fox’s command has come under scrutiny by IDF investigators probing the events surrounding the Hamas attack. These included several instances in which IDF soldiers under Fox stood by or participated in violent attacks on West Bank Palestinian civilians.
UPDATE:
Such human rights violations by Israeli forces in the West Bank, as well as others in Gaza, where Israel’s war against Hamas has killed some 34,000 Palestinians, according to the enclave’s Hamas-run Health Ministry, were included in the State Department’s annual human rights report, which was released on April 22.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken determined that an IDF battalion had committed serious human rights abuses against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank before the Gaza war began last October. But in an undated letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson, Blinken said he was holding off on imposing sanctions on the unit to give the IDF a chance to discipline its soldiers and restore proper conduct, according to the New York Times.
Though the letter did not name the battalion, a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, identified it as Netah Yehuda, which is made up of ultra-orthodox men and radical right wing settlers who were deemed unacceptable by all other IDF combat units.
The State Department began its investigation of the battalion in 2022 after its soldiers were involved in numerous violent incidents against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank. In one incident, Netzah Yehuda soldiers arrested Omar Assad, an 80-year-old Palestinian American, at a checkpoint near his village, claiming he refused to be searched. In response, the soldiers handcuffed and gagged him, then left him on the ground in the cold. He was found dead a few hours later.
A 1997 law crafted by then Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) prohibits U.S. foreign and military aid to foreign military, security and police units that have committed human rights violations.
Blinken told Johnson that the State Department determined that two Israeli battalions, as well as several civilian security units, had committed grave human rights abuses in the West Bank. But Blinken said that one of the military units and all the civilian units had taken effective steps to rectify their behavior, making sanctions unnecessary.
While Israel had not yet adopted measures to address Netzah Yehuda's human rights violations, Blinken said the State Department had received new information from Israeli officials about the unit and that U.S. officials would "engage [with the IDF] on identifying a path to effective remediation for this unit."
To date, the Leahy law has never been applied to the IDF, which maintains close ties with the U.S. military. Any sanctions would constitute a second embarrassing U.S. rebuke of Israel's West Bank occupation. In a February executive order, Biden slapped financial sanctions and visa bans on four Israeli settlers accused of attacking Palestinians civilians and peace activists in the territory, now in its 57th year. Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war.
Meanwhile, senior Israeli officials anticipate they will be the subjects of arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court on charges related to Israel's conduct in its war against Hamas in Gaza, a report said Monday.
The New York Times, quoting both Israeli and foreign officials, said that if the court goes forward with charges, top Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, members of his cabinet and senior military officers, could potentially be accused of mounting an excessively brutal response to Hamas' Oct. 7 attack that killed some 1,200 Israelis and took another 250 people hostage. The officials also said charges could include Israel's blocking humanitarian aid from reaching Gaza's civilians.
In addition, the officials said the court also could issue arrest warrants for Hamas leaders.
The court, based in the Hague, has not commented on the report.
Neither Israel nor the United States recognize the ICC, but such arrest warrants would restrict the travel of Netanyahu and others to the countries that do recognize the court.
Wow.
Wouldn't this indicate to most Israelis that the "rot" or incompetence starts at the very top, and does it portend well for early elections.