Ex-IDF chief: ‘I have no choice but to give credit to Hamas for its deception’

Halevi announced his resignation on Jan. 21, accepting responsibility for the IDF’s failure and saying it would “stay with me for the rest of my life.”

By JNS

Former IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. (res.) Herzi Halevi, who stepped down on March 5, said in a recording broadcast by Israel’s Army Radio on Sunday that he had no choice but to “credit” Hamas for “the deception it perpetrated on us.”

Hamas engaged in a number of deceptions to put Israel to sleep in order to prepare its October 2023 attack, Halevi said. “They tricked us and it worked.”

“In all the training and all the discussions we carried out, we never contemplated the possibility that 5% of what happened could happen,” he said.

The Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led invasion took Israel completely by surprise, resulting in the loss of some 1,200 lives, mostly civilians, and the kidnapping of 251 people. It took the IDF hours to mount an effective response.

In a Feb. 28 meeting with heads of regional councils in southern Israel to present the military’s internal findings regarding the Oct. 7 massacre, Halevi said, “I want you to know that many people who were murdered [on Oct. 7]—their last words were, ‘Where’s the IDF?’ I know this, and it is very, very difficult for us.”

Of the broader failings of the IDF, Halevi said that before the attack, the military viewed Hamas as a “limited” military force incapable of launching a large-scale surprise attack. The military’s posture toward Gaza had been reliant on intelligence, he said.

Israel’s Channel 12 reported that for the past 15 years, the Military Intelligence Directorate has had no human intelligence sources within Gaza and that the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) had no active intelligence sources in the Strip.

The military released on Feb. 27 the findings of its internal probes into the failures leading up to and during the Hamas-led cross-border terrorist attacks.

“It is wrong to ‘manage’ a conflict with an enemy whose goal is your destruction,” the military investigation stated, concluding that Hamas terrorists “took advantage of Israel’s policy of ‘conflict management’ to advance an orderly plan for a broad attack.”

Halevi announced his resignation on Jan. 21, accepting responsibility for the IDF’s failure and saying it would “stay with me for the rest of my life.”

In his final speech as chief of staff on March 5, Halevi called for an investigation to learn from the army’s mistakes and ensure its strength in the future.

Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir has replaced Halevi.

“Hamas has not yet been defeated,” Zamir said at his induction ceremony at IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv.

Zamir served as deputy chief of staff (2018-2021). Before that, he led the IDF Southern Command (2015-18).