Netanyahu, Regev dismiss TV report that they pre-planned assault on Halevi in cabinet meeting

The offices of both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Transportation Minister Miri Regev deny a report on tonight’s Channel 12 news that suggested Netanyahu primed Regev to lead a verbal assault on IDF Chief Herzi Halevi at a security cabinet meeting two weeks ago, and congratulated her afterward for doing so.
The meeting in question took place on January 4. Intended to focus on planning for the “day after” the war in Gaza, it descended into a fracas and Netanyahu cut it short after several right-wing ministers angrily confronted Halevi for setting up an internal investigation into the army’s handling of the October 7 Hamas attacks and their aftermath.
According to the TV report, an unnamed participant in the meeting, heading to the parking lot at the Defense Ministry headquarters after the meeting, overhead Netanyahu telling Likud colleague Regev, “Well done, Miri, you did good work.”
This participant reported the incident to his superior, and this in turn created a sense among defense officials that the incident had been pre-planned to undermine Halevi. (Some analysts have suggested the incident related to efforts by political leaders to place maximal blame for October 7’s failures on the military, and/or to ministers’ discomfort that the IDF is starting a probe of its own performance while Netanyahu is staving off wider investigations until after the war.)

The Prime Minister’s Office, in a statement, says the report is untrue, that Netanyahu does not tell ministers what to say at cabinet meetings, and that he did not speak to Regev before or after that meeting.
Regev’s office also says the report is untrue. It says ministers only heard about Halevi’s internal investigation in the course of the meeting, and hence asked him questions about it.
In a TV interview on Thursday, war cabinet minister Gadi Eisenkot expressed deep dismay about what he called the “ambush” of Halevi at that meeting. “I was pretty shocked by that show — it looked like an ambush, not spontaneous,” said Eisenkot. “It was very disrespectful, to put it mildly.”