Former IDF intelligence chief Aharon Haliva, who resigned from his position as head of the Military Intelligence Directorate against the backdrop of Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, was heard on a recording leaked to the media on Thursday blaming the Shin Bet for not foreseeing and preventing the deadly invasion.
“Where were you, Shin Bet, with all of your billions [of shekel in funding] that you receive?” Haliva can be heard asking in the recording aired by Channel 12.
The ex-intelligence official repeated his contention that if he had been woken up during the preceding night, he would have concurred with the assessments of other intelligence officers at the time — that Hamas was deterred and wasn’t actually planning a large-scale attack. Anyone now claiming differently is a “liar,” Haliva can be heard saying.
Haliva also lamented the decline of Israeli institutions, adding that even in the IDF, the breakdown of discipline had turned it into a “brothel.”
“Many processes have broken down every good [institution] here. Because there is no police force. Because there is no rule of law. Even in the army, many things related to basic discipline — it’s all falling apart. It has become a brothel,” he can be heard saying.
Channel 12 did not reveal the circumstances of the recording, but said it would air the full clip on its Friday evening broadcast.
Haliva, who announced he was stepping down in April 2024, was the first senior defense official to resign over his failures leading up to October 7. In the letter announcing his departure, he wrote that “along with authority comes heavy responsibility.”
Addressing former IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, Haliva wrote that he carried the weight of “that black day” ever since Hamas-led terrorists burst into southern Israel, catching the IDF by surprise as it struggled to mount a response amid the chaos with its bases near the Gaza border overrun.
The onslaught claimed the lives of some 1,200 people in Israel, with another 251 people kidnapped and much of the area devastated.