Defense minister halts promotions of IDF brass until all Oct. 7 probes handed over
Israel Katz tells IDF chief Halevi that senior officers cannot advance until there is clarity over their actions during the Hamas onslaught, in move hailed by far right
Defense Minister Israel Katz said Thursday he was freezing the promotions of senior officers in the Israel Defense Forces until the army presents him with all the investigations it has conducted into the October 7 massacre.
The Thursday move by Katz, which set a January 31 deadline for Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi to hand over the probes, was lauded by far-right ministers who have urged sweeping change at the top of the Israel Defense Forces command structure.
In a statement issued by Katz’s office, the defense minister instructed Halevi to show him all of the October 7 investigations that have so far been completed.
While the government has refused to appoint a state commission of inquiry and has opposed any probes that could include looking at political failures surrounding the devastating surprise attack, its leadup, and aftermath, the army has conducted internal investigations to learn what went wrong.
“It is the duty of the IDF to finish the investigations as soon as possible to present them to the families and the public in Israel, and to draw lessons and the necessary conclusions,” Katz’s statement said.
Halevi has previously indicated that he will resign upon the completion of the army’s October 7 probes.
Katz will refuse to sign off on any officers being promoted to the rank of major general, and will also oppose the appointment of any major generals to new roles, until he reviews the investigations “and learns and understands their meaning and possible effect on the candidates for promotion,” his office said.
Promotions in the IDF since the October 7 onslaught have come under fire by some coalition members, who have argued that as Halevi had failed in his role, he should not be the one to appoint commanders.
The IDF is slated to present to Halevi and the General Staff on Friday the initial findings of its probe into the functioning of the top IDF echelons on the night of October 6-7. The General Staff will then discuss the findings.
According to a report on Channel 12 news, the probe indicates that Halevi should have held a wider situational assessment that night, rather than narrower consultations, that would have better highlighted what was going on, and could have led to different, better decisions in the hours ahead of the Hamas invasion and massacre. Nonetheless, the TV report stated, the probe says that there was no definitive information that Hamas was about to carry out the attack.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich lauded Katz’s move as a “worthy decision that represents a refreshing and positive change, as opposed to the policies of Gallant.” Former defense minister Yoav Gallant, who was pushed out of office last month, backed establishing a state commission of inquiry that would probe political leaders, himself included.
Smotrich, leader of the far-right Religious Zionism party, wrote that there was a need to “rebuild the senior command of the IDF and to appoint only commanders who were not part of the ‘conception’ of containment and restraint” — a reference to the widely held belief in the security establishment before October 7 that Hamas was deterred from launching a major attack due to the expected consequences.
Allied far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir also backed Katz, saying in a statement that it is a “logical and correct decision” to not promote officers until the investigation is completed.
“The time has come to replace the whole generation of the ‘conception’ in the IDF,” he wrote. Far-right lawmakers, including Smotrich and Ben Gvir, have scorned past approaches in dealing with threats from Gaza as too timid and instead called for using military might.
Head of the opposition Democrats party Yair Golan, who is a former deputy commander of the IDF, panned Katz, saying that “a political wheeler-dealer can’t be the defense minister” and that it is “sad” that Katz is threatening the army chief.
Katz has already held up the promotion of two officers from the IDF’s Southern Command until their roles in the failures of October 7 are investigated.
On October 7, 2023, Palestinian terror group Hamas led a devastating cross-border attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and saw 251 abducted and taken as hostages to Gaza.
Netanyahu has repeatedly put off the establishment of a state commission of inquiry, which is the body that enjoys the broadest powers under the law, to investigate the government’s failures that enabled the deadly Hamas attacks, claiming that all investigations must wait until the fighting in Gaza ends.
Last month Channel 13 reported that Netanyahu was attempting to promote legislation that would ban any establishment of a state commission of inquiry into the events of October 7.
