IDF probe blames flawed culture at top of elite Egoz unit for friendly fire deaths

A number of officers from the elite Egoz unit will be removed from their positions, though notably not its commander, for their role in the deaths of two officers in a deadly case of friendly fire last month during an unplanned search for night vision equipment that had been stolen from their unit the day before, the Israel Defense Forces said Monday.

An investigation into the incident found that the unit had a “culture of failing to report and investigate [incidents],” that the troops displayed a major lapse in judgment in the incident, and that they conducted their wildcat patrol in a particularly dangerous way, with guns loaded and bullets in their chambers, in clear violation of IDF protocol and values, according to Maj. Gen. (res.) Noam Tibon, who led the probe.

Speaking to reporters, Tibon said the incident was particularly troubling as those involved, including the officers who were killed, were not young soldiers but veteran commanders, on track to hold yet higher positions within the military, who repeatedly and flagrantly violated IDF norms for entirely unnecessary and unclear reasons.

Tibon said the writing had been on the wall in the two days preceding the deadly friendly fire incident and that the unit’s chain of command could have and should have intervened to prevent the deaths of Maj. Ofek Aharon, 28, and Maj. Itamar Elharar, 26.

In a letter that was distributed throughout the military on Monday, IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi wrote that their deaths were caused by “professional failings, failure to obey orders, and most of all a grave lapse in judgment.”

The incident came shortly after the military announced it was changing its rules of engagement to allow soldiers to use deadly force against people breaking into army bases and stealing equipment, leading to claims that the deaths were the consequence of this less restrictive open-fire policy. But Tibon said he did not find that to be the case, as the officers involved effectively put themselves in so dangerous a position that their use of deadly force was in response to what they perceived as an immediate threat to their lives, rather than as part of an arrest effort.

At the same time, Tibon said junior officers and lower-ranking soldiers indeed do not have a firm grasp on the rules of engagement, leading to different interpretations of the open-fire policy. In a statement, the IDF said that the issue would be addressed immediately, with Kohavi calling for the entire military to halt its normal activities and hold a week-long review of the rules of engagement and other issues related to routine IDF protocols in order to “root out unacceptable norms.”

Despite the severity of Tibon’s findings, the commander of the Egoz unit, whose name is barred from publication, was not removed from his position, though he did offer to resign, according to the head of the IDF Central Command, Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fuchs. Fuchs told reporters that Kohavi refused to accept the resignation. Instead, Kohavi ordered that the Egoz commander complete his tenure in the unit, but nixed his planned promotion to command the IDF’s Alexandroni Brigade and barred him from command positions for the next two years.

Asked if the punishments were not overly light, given the severity of the incident, with the commander of the Commando Brigade, which contains the Egoz unit, not even receiving a formal censure, Fuchs defended the decision. He said more senior officers would have received harsher punishments had they played more significant roles in the event, but since they were largely kept in the dark about what happened, they could only be held accountable for creating an environment in which issues were not properly reported.

Three investigations were launched in the immediate aftermath of the deadly friendly fire incident: a criminal one by the Military Police, a disciplinary one within the IDF Central Command, and Tibon’s probe, known as an “experts committee,” which included members with experience in a number of different disciplines.

The findings of the disciplinary and the “experts committee” investigations were presented to Fuchs and Kohavi in recent days, ahead of their public release on Monday. The criminal probe was ongoing.

In order to deliver its report quickly, Tibon’s investigation had a particularly narrow scope, focusing solely on the days preceding the friendly fire incident.

The probes’ findings

The catalyst for the friendly fire incident was the theft of night vision equipment from the firing range at the military’s Nebi Musa base in the Jordan Valley, an area that regularly sees thefts, mostly by the residents of nearby Bedouin communities.

On January 11, a soldier who had been tasked with taking down a mobile floodlight setup left his night vision gear unguarded as he worked and found it missing when he finished. The soldier, who has since been barred from serving in a combat position, immediately reported the theft. Despite the soldiers not knowing in what direction the culprit fled, a quick search effort was organized, during which one soldier fired his gun into the air after seeing suspicious figures in the distance, without going through the necessary open-fire protocol, in a violation of military regulations, Tibon said.

Aharon and Elharar were not on the base when the theft occurred, but hurried back that night after hearing about it. Later, without permission and without informing their superiors, they and other officers set out to find the missing night vision equipment, driving to nearby Bedouin communities, questioning people and searching tents, in what Tibon referred to as a “violation of IDF values.”

The next morning, they informed the deputy commander of the unit about their efforts to find the stolen equipment the night before and about the shots fired into the air during the initial search, but the deputy commander apparently did not see those violations as significant and no steps were taken against those involved, a move Tibon said could have kept the event from escalating. The head of the unit had been told about the theft and called for increased security around the training area, but he was otherwise not informed of the efforts to find the equipment.

On January 12, two efforts were made to recover the stolen equipment. At 4 p.m., Lt. “Nun,” who would later shoot dead Aharon and Elharar, chased after suspicious figures he saw in the distance near the firing range. (For security reasons, he can only be referred to by his rank and first Hebrew initial.) Four hours later, “Nun” and Aharon, along with a third soldier, chased after suspicious figures they spotted and even fired their weapons into the air, in yet another violation of IDF protocol.

Later that night, two separate patrols set out from the firing ranges to find night vision equipment. One of those patrols was made up of “Nun,” acting alone. This in itself was a violation of the IDF protocol requiring at least two people in a patrol. He set out on his patrol without informing anyone, with a magazine in his weapon and with a round loaded into the chamber.

Separately, a group of four Egoz members — three officers and a sergeant — set out on their own patrol. This patrol was made up of Aharon and Elharar, another section leader at the rank of major, who can also only be identified by his first initial, “Yod,” and a non-commissioned officer, whose name was not released. They set out with nearly no planning and no clear objective beyond catching the suspected thief or someone else who could lead them to the culprit. They also left with insufficient equipment — only “Yod” carried night vision equipment and only the three officers had weapons. As they walked, Aharon and Elharar also inserted magazines into their guns and loaded a round into their weapons. “Yod,” with the night vision equipment, primarily directed the patrol; he never loaded his weapon, according to Tibon’s probe.

A little after 10 p.m., the larger patrol spotted “Nun” walking and believed he was a Bedouin thief. As they got close to him, at roughly 11 p.m., he noticed them and believed them to be “armed terrorists, threatening his life,” Tibon said, based on interviews with “Nun” and the other soldiers involved in the incident.

However, Tibon stressed that “Nun” should had no real reason to suspect that armed terrorists would be attacking him. Though the Nebi Musa base does see thefts on a relatively regular basis, it is firmly controlled and operated by the military, and is not in an area that sees violent terrorist attacks. “We spent a lot of time trying to get into their heads,” he said.

It is not yet known who fired first in the encounter. “Yod” and the sergeant told investigators that Aharon and Elharar did, while “Nun” maintains that he initiated the firefight. Tibon said that he was not sufficiently convinced one way or another in order to make a definitive ruling on the matter. Fuchs also acknowledged the uncertainty, though he stood by his initial claim, made in the hours following the incident, that “Nun” appeared to have fired first.

In either case, ultimately “Nun” shot Aharon and Elharar three times each. They fired their weapons — nine bullet casings were recovered from the scene — but missed.

According to the probe, “Nun” only stopped firing when “Yod,” realizing what had happened, shouted out, “Halt! Halt! IDF! IDF!”

Aharon and Elharar suffered direct hits and were pronounced dead at the scene.

Tibon’s probe did not take issue with the medical response, finding that a medic reaching the scene within seven minutes of the two being shot and a doctor and senior paramedic arriving some 13 minutes later. Due to the severity of their wounds, there would have been no way to save Aharon and Elharar’s lives regardless of how long it took medical personnel to arrive, the investigation found.

In addition to finding that the troops set out on their patrols in a dangerous fashion, Tibon said that their search efforts were also “inefficient” and were highly unlikely to result in the recovery of the stolen night vision equipment.

The investigations failed to determine why the five soldiers decided to go out on unapproved, unplanned patrols. They were not an attempt to recover the night vision equipment in order to hide the theft to get out of punishment, as the head of the unit had already been informed of it. They were also not an attempt to mitigate punishment for the theft, as the soldier who left the equipment unguarded was not in any of their sections.

“I don’t have an explanation,” Fuchs said.

Fuchs, the head of the IDF Central Command, which contains the Egoz unit, repeatedly described Aharon and Elharar, as well as the other officers involved, as “the best of our boys,” but acknowledged that, in going out on their patrols with guns loaded and with no coordination, they showed “no common sense.”

Tibon stressed that Aharon and Elharar’s deaths were entirely preventable and “unnecessary.”

He said that Egoz’s “culture” of failing to report incidents up the chain of command, and of more senior officers failing to investigate such reports, needed to be addressed quickly. The issue, he said, was unique to Egoz and did not appear to be present in other commando units he investigated.

Tibon added that there was no contradiction between wanting soldiers to be aggressive and creative, and wanting them to follow reasonable safety protocols and report incidents to their commanders.

Though he accepted the investigation’s findings about the Egoz unit’s cultural problems, Fuchs maintained that the detachment was one of the military’s best, having conducted successful operations in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza over the past year. “That is also part of their culture,” he said.

Fuchs added that Egoz had been through multiple evaluations in the previous year, none of which turned up issues. Asked by The Times of Israel how these assessments missed the deep cultural issues in the unit that Tibon’s probe found, Fuchs acknowledged a need to “improve how we do reviews.” He said he believed the gap also showed that the officers held their soldiers to stricter standards than they held themselves, masking those cultural issues.

“They allowed themselves to do more than what they would allow their soldiers to do,” Fuchs said. “That’s the only way I can explain this.”