Herzi Halevi, the top brass and the “Palestinian state” agenda, Part 1
“We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies. We want to be able to live in an entirely different environment of relations with our enemies.” — Ehud Olmert, March 2006.’
Yesterday, 21 January 2025, IDF Chief-of-Staff Herzi Halevi formally resigned his position. The magnanimous praise of his tireless exertions to protect Israel and her people has already begun. The conduct of the top brass and the security leadership is still, more than a year later, described as an “intelligence failure”. This is a curious characterisation, since the IDF and security leaders had all the intelligence they needed to stop the Hamas invasion. This was neither a security failure, nor incompetence, but something altogether more sinister. This two-part essay looks at one actor in this tragedy, Herzi Halevi, and puts forward what we were able to glean about the conduct of IDF Chiefs-of-Staff since the Oslo Accords, based only on English sources. We suggest a possible explanation for the “intelligence failure” euphemism. This essay also challenges the idea that the Biden Administration had tied the IDF’s hands behind its back. I relied heavily on Professor Efraim Karsh’s stunning paper, “From Oslo to Be’eri: how the 30-years-long peace delusion led to Hamas’s 10/7 massacres”, in Israel Affairs, 9 October 2024. Until such time as a proper inquiry is held, Prof. Karsh’s paper is the most comprehensive account of the “intelligence failure” I could find. For this source, I am indebted to an Israeli friend who prefers to remain anonymous.
