“The military intelligence directorate under my command did not live up to our mission,” Haliva said in a letter shared by the IDF. “I have been carrying that black day ever since, day and night. I will live with the horrible pain of the war every day,” he said.
For more than a year, Hamas strategically planned its assault on Israel, following battle plans built on open-source materials, Israeli intelligence officers said in December.
The attack stunned Israelis and immediately raised questions about the country’s intelligence and defense capabilities. The Post reported last year that despite information coming to light in August that an attack was imminent, warnings were dismissed and the communities on the Israeli side of the border were never notified about a threat.
Monday’s admission of guilt is not new for Haliva, who, just 10 days after the Hamas attack took responsibility for the intelligence failures that led to the assault.
“In all my visits to Military Intelligence Directorate units in the last 11 days, I sat down and stressed that the beginning of the war was an intelligence failure,” Haliva said in October, adding that the military intelligence directorate, under his command, “failed to warn of the terrorist attack.”
Lior Soroka contributed to this report
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