Liberman claims IDF chief accepted 90-95% of ombudsman’s criticism on readiness

Former defense minister Avigdor Liberman continues his broadside against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by telling a conference that the government is “buying short term” quiet in Gaza and harming long term security, warning that Hamas could turn into a “southern Hezbollah.”

Liberman, who resigned from the Defense Ministry a week ago, in protest of a ceasefire agreement with Gaza’s Hamas after a major flareup, also wades into an increasingly public squabble over the Israel Defense Forces’ combat readiness.

He says he has personally heard the army’s chief of staff, Gadi Eisenkot, admitting that “90 to 95 percent” of criticism published yesterday by the military ombudsman is correct.

In a letter to Netanyahu and Liberman in early October, Maj. Gen. (res.) Yitzhak Brick, formally known as the chief complaints officer in the Defense Ministry, charged that the current situation in the IDF was “worse than it was at the time of the Yom Kippur War” in 1973, when Israel was famously caught off-guard by a surprise attack by Egypt and Syria.

Yesterday, Brick sent a letter to members of the Knesset Foreign and Defense Committee, warning that army officers are not telling the truth about shortfalls, warning of a manpower crisis, and citing problems with the storage and maintenance of tanks and armored personnel carriers.

In public, the army has branded the claims as “improper and off-base” and maintained that the military was in peak combat fitness.