Op-ed: Day 474 of the war

Farewell Herzi Halevi, uniformed embodiment of our national tragedy, leader of the fightback

A resilient and decent man, he knows nothing will ever obscure the catastrophic consequence of the IDF’s failure, under his command, to give even minimal credence to the evidence that Hamas was preparing to invade

David Horovitz

David Horovitz is the founding editor of The Times of Israel. He is the author of "Still Life with Bombers" (2004) and "A Little Too Close to God" (2000), and co-author of "Shalom Friend: The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin" (1996). He previously edited The Jerusalem Post (2004-2011) and The Jerusalem Report (1998-2004).

IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi attends a state ceremony marking the Hebrew calendar anniversary of the Hamas onslaught on October 7, 2023, at the Mount Herzl military cemetery in Jerusalem, October 27, 2024. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)
IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi attends a state ceremony marking the Hebrew calendar anniversary of the Hamas onslaught on October 7, 2023, at the Mount Herzl military cemetery in Jerusalem, October 27, 2024. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

This Editor’s Note was sent out earlier Wednesday in ToI’s weekly update email to members of the Times of Israel Community. To receive these Editor’s Notes as they’re released, join the ToI Community here.

So farewell, then, to Herzi Halevi, the IDF chief of staff on whose watch Hamas burst through Israel’s obscenely unprotected border to carry out the deadliest one-day attack in our country’s modern history.

“The IDF’s primary mission is to protect the country’s citizens. We failed in that,” Halevi told this traumatized nation, straight and simple, in a filmed resignation statement on Tuesday night.

The lugubrious chief of staff cut a tragic figure in departure. Of course he did. A decent, resilient and tenacious man, he is also the walking, exhausted, uniformed embodiment of the unparalleled Israeli tragedy that he, his military colleagues and his political masters failed to avert.

Halevi legitimately argued that he was departing at a time “when the IDF has [attained] the upper hand in all the combat theaters” that erupted after October 7, 2023. His capacity, and that of Tuesday’s other high-ranking IDF resigner, Southern Command chief Yaron Finkelman, to clear their heads amid the horrors of that day and rapidly take the offensive against Hamas, while also moving to deter a potentially still more devastating invasion by Hezbollah in the north, was a testament to their patriotism, determination and lifelong obligation to the defense of this land.

But as Halevi knows full well, nothing can or ever will obscure the extent and catastrophic consequence of the IDF’s ultimately inexplicable failure, under Halevi’s command, to give even minimal credence to the evidence unfolding in plain sight that Hamas was preparing the invasion, and thus to take even the minimal steps necessary to defend against it. “I have borne the consequences of that terrible day ever since and will carry them with me for the rest of my life,” he said, and there can be no doubting it.

It is a measure of the abiding unfathomability of the failure, and its exploitation by conspiracy theorists — many of them seeking to exculpate Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from his unsurpassable overall responsibility — that Halevi also felt it necessary to address 15 months of lies and insidious disinformation regarding Israel’s vulnerability and impotence that day.

“No one hid information,” said the chief of staff, who endured repeated verbal assaults from the prime minister and malicious cabinet ministers as they sought to place almost all October 7 blame on his shoulders, to claim that he and the other security chiefs kept Netanyahu in the dark, to marginalize the policies overseen by the prime minister that for years enabled the financing of Hamas, to deflect attention from the warnings through 2023 that Israel’s coalition-fostered divides were emboldening our enemies, and to complain within weeks that the war wasn’t yet won. “No one knew what was about to happen,” Halevi added. “No one helped the enemy carry out its brutality.”

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi (left) with the chief of the Southern Command, Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman, in northern Gaza, February 6, 2024. (Israel Defense Forces)

Halevi had made clear from the start of the war that he recognized his culpability and would go as soon as he was asked to by the defense minister, or, if not asked, as soon as he thought the moment was right. In the event, with a defense minister who he regarded as a partner, Yoav Gallant, dismissed from office, and one who he did not, Israel Katz, making plain that he would be pushed if he didn’t jump, Halevi scheduled the date of his departure, March 6, to coincide with the end of the first phase of the hostage-ceasefire deal he had been urging for months.

Does this signal his confidence that the second and third phases of the deal will be successfully negotiated, and that a return to intensive fighting in Gaza is not in the offing? Or, the reverse — that we are now in a period of relative calm, and that these few weeks would be best used, first, for Netanyahu and Katz to choose his successor, and, then, as Halevi put it Tuesday, for him to “transfer command of the IDF in a high-quality and thorough manner to my replacement”?

As he did throughout his hellish tenure — which began barely a week after Justice Minister Yariv Levin had unveiled his ultra-contentious bid to destroy Israel’s independent judiciary, which in turn sent shockwaves through an Israeli military heavily dependent on its civilian reservists — Halevi, in his resignation letter and TV statement, attempted to stay out of partisan politics.

Having repeatedly told the political echelon that the IDF desperately needs all the manpower that can be mustered, and is gearing up to absorb all eligible Haredi men by the summer of 2026, he made no mention of Katz’s efforts to advance legislation that would ensure, at improbable best, that no more than 50 percent of eligible Haredi males will be conscripted… by 2032.

He also framed the need for an effective independent commission of inquiry into October 7 — an obvious imperative to establish what went wrong and ensure no repeat — in a constructive, rather than confrontational, context.

“Upon completing the IDF’s investigations, we will better understand what happened to us, why it happened, and how to fix it,” Halevi said, promising that those internal probes will be completed before he steps down. But, he noted, “The military investigation focuses solely on the IDF, and cannot encompass all the causes and areas that could prevent similar events in the future.” Therefore, “an investigative committee or any other external body will be able to investigate and examine, and will have the IDF’s full transparency.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant award incoming IDF chief Herzi Halevi with the rank of lieutenant general at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, January 16, 2023. (Israel Defense Forces)

The required powerhouse state commission of inquiry — the body that enjoys the broadest powers under Israeli law, including the right to subpoena witnesses — has been bitterly resisted by Netanyahu, who knows its conclusions and recommendations would likely be devastating for him personally.

The prime minister is not about to heed the departing Halevi’s low-key call for its establishment.

Nor, indeed, will he follow Halevi’s lead in demonstrating what responsibility for the October 7 disaster requires of those who were best placed, and thus failed most absolutely, to prevent it.

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