Major Gen Aharon Haliva, Chief of Intelligence in the Israeli military becomes the first high ranking military official to step down from his position after claiming responsibility for the failures that led horrific attack of the October 7th by Hamas on Israeli
In his letter to the Israeli army chief published on Monday he admitted that the intelligence directorate under his command “did not live up to the task” which they were entrusted with.
The Israeli army also confirmed that Maj Gen Haliva would only leave office after his replacement was found.
“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,” wrote Haliva as he expressed his regrets in his resignation letter put out by the IDF.
The attack of the October 7th carried out on Israel by Hamas’s Qassam brigade and other armed groups claimed the lives of about 1200 Israeli civilians with another 250 taken as hostages in Gaza according to Israeli tallies, the deadliest ever since the country’s formation in 1948.
This attack was met with a very heavy response which has since then claimed the lives of 34000 Palestinian in Gaza including combatants and non-combatants majority of them being women and children the Local ministry of health says .
All this was done in an aim to free hostages and destroy hamas in Gaza leaving 80 percent of Gaza’s population displaced in the coastal enclave and in a major humanitarian crisis ever witnessed with a majority of them plunged into starvation
Israeli military and intelligence leaders had dismissed a 40-page document by a senior analyst outlining an assault that turned out to be surprisingly same to the one on October 7, according to the New York Times , where the Israeli officials saw Hamas as incapable of carrying out such an attack.
In his resignation letter Haliva also called for the establishment of an investigations and inquiry committee to determine all the conditions that led to the October 7th attack .
Haliva’s departure is expected to be followed by further resignations among Israel’s senior military and intelligence commanders, with other officials having admitted to errors and blunder leading to the October 7th attacks.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid said on X (formerly Twitter) that Maj Gen Haliva’s decision to resign was “justified and honorable,” but added that Mr Netanyahu “should have done the same.”
