Smotrich draws storm of criticism after blaming IDF chief for October 7 failures
Far-right finance minister says Halevi, senior commanders will not ‘mold the next generation of the IDF’
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich drew a storm of criticism on Sunday after he blamed IDF Chief of Staff Lt Gen. Herzi Halevi for the country’s failure to prevent Hamas’s October 7 massacre.
“This IDF chief of staff brought us one of the greatest disasters in the history of the country,” Smotrich said in an interview with Channel 12 Sunday. “It isn’t just that he failed on the 7th of October, it is a long-standing failure,” he added.
Smotrich said Halevi would not be the one to “mold the next generation of the IDF.”
“He will not appoint commanders… there is no trust in this matter,” said the far-right head of the Religious Zionism party, part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right, right-wing, and Haredi coalition. The political leadership, however, he added, is “completely backing them at the moment to manage the war and win.”
The political echelon will also probe its actions and decisions in the lead-up to the shock Hamas onslaught, he said, and “will learn the lessons. It will happen. But right now, we are busy managing the war and winning.”
“This is the mandate of the IDF chief of staff” and senior commanders, but “they will not decide how a reformed IDF will look.”
Smotrich made similar remarks in a broadside last week at the IDF and Halevi, whom he said has no mandate to design a “new and reformed IDF” during wartime amid the IDF chief’s recent round of senior appointments. Smotrich said Halevi had not been tasked with overhauling the military and called “to stop the round of appointments,” arguing that it was “not the time.”
Earlier this month, Halevi announced the first list of senior appointments in the military since the October 7 onslaught, including three new brigadier generals and 11 new colonels, as well as 26 colonels who are moving positions but staying at the same rank. He has said that delaying such appointments would harm the IDF.
Smotrich’s criticism came after the IDF also announced that Brig. Gen. Barak Hiram, the commander of the Israeli military’s 99th Division, was formally censured for the demolition of a university in the Gaza Strip earlier this year without the necessary authorization.
The far-right minister’s comments drew ire Sunday, with National Unity MK Chili Tropper calling out Smotrich’s “insolent” comments in a post on Facebook. “Smotrich talks about the need for trust in the army chiefs and claims that trust has been lost.”
“Well, according to all indicators, the army actually enjoys the highest level of trust in Israeli society, while Smotrich and the Netanyahu government are suffering from a tremendous crisis of trust from the point of view of the Israeli public,” he wrote, in an apparent reference to survey results released last week that showed public support for the IDF at record highs.
Halevi and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant took responsibility in the early days of the war for their parts in failing to prevent the slaughter in southern Israel on October 7 in which Hamas terrorists killed some 1,200 people and abducted 253 hostages, half of whom are still held in Gaza.
Netanyahu has notably so far avoided taking direct responsibility for the failures surrounding the October 7 onslaught, and according to some observers, has sought to shift the blame to the security establishment.
Smotrich has taken responsibility, saying in a press conference on October 15, 2023, that “we have to admit with pain and with a bowed head — we failed. The country’s leadership and the security system have failed in maintaining the security of our residents.”
“I take responsibility for what was and what will be,” Smotrich said, adding that the “massacre was the most horrifying we have known in Israel — such unimaginable cruelty that the world has not seen since the Holocaust.”
In response to Smotrich’s remarks on Sunday, MK Matan Kahana, also from National Unity said: “A senior minister in the worst and most terrible government we’ve ever seen, the government that is responsible for the most terrible tragedy that has befallen the Jewish people since the Holocaust, does not even begin to understand the meaning of ‘responsibility.'”
Opposition Leader Yair Lapid called for the finance minister’s resignation. “First, accept responsibility for your failure as a government and resign. Only then will you have the right to talk about others,” Lapid wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Earlier this month, Channel 12 reported that State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman was aiming to publish preliminary findings into the state’s and security establishment’s failures in the lead-up to Hamas’s October 7 massacre by the first anniversary of the brutal incursion.
Channel 12 noted that due to the report’s limited scope, Netanyahu’s role in the missteps would not be the focus of the initial findings set to be released.
Among the issues to be reviewed by the comptroller’s office were the conduct of the government’s security cabinet; the conduct of policymakers and the military on October 7 itself; intelligence preparedness before October 7; the defense posture on the Gaza border before the Hamas invasion; the preparedness of the civilian security squads in the Gaza border region before the war; the funding of Hamas; and the lack of equipment for IDF soldiers, Englman said in December.
His office was also set to study the government’s actions following the outbreak of war, including how civilians from the south and north were relocated; the evacuation of the injured and the collection and identification of the bodies of the victims; the rights of those harmed in the attack and their ability to access those rights; and the government’s public diplomacy activities.
The IDF is conducting an internal investigation with a focus on a timeframe starting from the March 2018 Hamas-led Gaza border riots until October 10, 2023, the point when Israeli troops re-established control of southern Israel following the onslaught.
The findings are expected to be presented to Halevi by the beginning of June, the military said earlier this month.
