Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi on Friday indicated that he intends to resign once the military completes its investigations into Hamas’s October 7 onslaught.
- “At the end of the investigations, we will also make personal decisions and commanders will exercise responsibility, from me down. I have no intention of passing over personal decisions when the picture becomes clearer to us,” he wrote in a missive to troops.
In July, when he was asked whether he intended to resign, Halevi had said he would decide “when the tasks are completed.”
“I have expressed my responsibility on several occasions, and these words also have a practical meaning, it is very clear to me,” Halevi said at the time. “We do not leave tasks in the middle, when we complete the tasks, I will make my decisions.”
- Halevi has been the IDF’s chief of staff since early 2023, and oversaw the military before and during the October 7 attacks, when some 3,000 Hamas-led terrorists burst across the border from Gaza, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 251 hostages, mostly civilians, many amid acts of brutality and sexual assault.
That attack sparked the ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza, against Hezbollah in Lebanon and on several other fronts, during which Halevi has commanded Israeli military operations.
Halevi’s missive on Friday largely focused on defending his decision to make senior appointments in the military, with some arguing that he should not be making such choices as he failed in his role concerning the October 7 onslaught.
- “Appointing officers to positions is not a privilege, but a command and operational duty. The IDF cannot afford to freeze,” Halevi said.
In a recent round of appointments, Defense Minister Israel Katz refused to approve two officers due to their potential involvement in the failures that led to the October 7 attack.
- In a statement issued by the Defense Ministry, Katz said that he had approved the list of appointments apart from two officers from the Southern Command: Col. Ephraim Avni, who was head of operations at the Southern Command, and Col. Almog Dadon, the head of combat engineering at the Southern Command.
- Katz said their promotion would be on hold until their “connection to the events of October 7 and their performance during the war is thoroughly examined.”
The defense minister was referring to internal IDF investigations of the onslaught, and not a state commission of inquiry, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has opposed.
Promotions in the IDF since the October 7 attacks have come under fire by some coalition members, who have argued that Halevi should not be the one to appoint commanders. They have also said that senior officers should not be promoted until the military finishes probing its failures that led to the Hamas attack, as some generals may have been involved in the missteps.
Source: TOI