From the Liveblog of
Saturday, January 6, 2024
Regev renews criticism of IDF chief for his announced October 7 investigation
Transportation Minister Miri Regev again criticizes IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi for the kind of investigation she says he is setting up into the events of October 7. And she denies that she and her colleagues in the security cabinet “assailed” Halevi at a meeting on Thursday night that ended in a shouting match.
Herself a former IDF Spokeswoman, Regev says on Channel 12 that the IDF does need to carry out operational investigations to learn lessons for the ongoing fight against Hamas. “But there is a difference between carrying out a tactical probe and saying, ‘I am now appointing ex-generals to investigate October 7.'”
Halevi’s announcement that he had asked former IDF chief and defense minister Shaul Mofaz and other ex-military figures to probe aspects of the failures surrounding Hamas’s October 7 invasion sparked Thursday night’s cabinet dust-up. Several ministers castigated the IDF chief, with some saying that a thorough probe needed to wait until the war was over. According to reports from the meeting, Regev told Halevi that the political echelon could also start investigating the causes of that day’s catastrophe, in comments that appeared to indicate a potential blame game between politicians and the military.
In leaked comments from the meeting, Halevi was ambivalent about the scope of his planned probe.
In her Channel 12 interview, Regev says that the events leading up to October 7 will be investigated in full by a state commission of inquiry after the war.
Regev says ministers “are required to ask hard-hitting questions of the IDF chief” and notes that “not every question is a denunciation. It cannot be that, time after time, when we ask pointed, serious questions of the IDF chief, it is said that we are assailing the IDF chief.”
She says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is overseeing the war “with great responsibility.”
And taking aim at her Likud colleague Yoav Gallant, the defense minister, she says he should “take care” that what he says in various forums serves “to bolster resilience and not weaken us.”
