TEL AVIV, Israel — Leaked audio recordings that were aired on Friday show comments made by Israel’s former military intelligence chief regarding the cost he thought the Palestinians should bear for the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas.
Israel’s Channel 12 TV broadcast the audio recordings, which showed former Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva stating in Hebrew, “The fact that there are already 50,000 dead in Gaza is necessary and required for future generations.”
He went on to suggest that 50 Palestinians should perish for every Israeli killed on October 7.
“Whether or not they are children is irrelevant. I’m not saying this to get even. I’m referring to a message for the next generation. They occasionally require a Nakba to feel the consequences,” Haliva remarked.
The widespread exodus of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the 1948 war that prompted Israel’s founding is known as the “catastrophe” or Nakba.
This is the first instance of a former high-ranking Israeli military official stating that Israel’s nearly two-year-long war in Gaza had killed a significant number of Palestinians and that it was “necessary.” There was no transmission on the day the comments were made.
Previous fiery statements by Israeli officials about “erasing” Gaza and combatting “human animals” have been used as proof that Israel is committing genocide, a claim Israel disputes, at the International Court of Justice in a case brought by South Africa.
However, this is the first time a statement of this nature has been ascribed to a member of the military establishment at Haliva’s level.
The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem posted on X, saying, “The comments made by former head of Military Intelligence Aharon Haliva are part of a long line of official statements that expose a deliberate policy of genocide.”
Prior to the largest intelligence failure in Israel’s history—the Oct. 7, 2023, surprise attack on Israel conducted by Hamas that, according to Israeli government calculations, killed around to 1,200 Israelis—Haliva supervised Israeli military intelligence departments. The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza reports that since then, more than 60,000 Palestinians have been murdered in Gaza.
He accepted responsibility for the intelligence lapses that permitted the Hamas attack and the abduction of over 250 Israelis, 50 of whom are still in captivity, when he resigned from the IDF in April 2024.
In additional comments shown by Israeli Channel 12, he acknowledged that Israeli intelligence had long misjudged the threat posed by Gaza. For many years, military analyses came to the conclusion that the West Bank, not Gaza, posed a higher threat of assault and that Hamas was discouraged from starting a full-scale conflict.
When Hamas rebels overran Israeli military installations and neighborhoods early on October 7, revealing serious weaknesses in Israel’s defenses, those presumptions fell apart.
Haliva responded on Israeli Channel 12, saying that the words were taken out of context and that he apologized for the remarks that were leaked from a private conversation.
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