Khaberni - The Israeli Army Chief of Staff, Eyal Zamir, dismissed senior leaders on Sunday evening, for their role in the surveillance that led to the "Al-Aqsa Flood" operation on October 7, 2023.
As part of the decisions made by the Chief of Staff this evening, the head of the Operations Division at the outbreak of the war, Reserve General Oded Basiuk, was dismissed from reserve service.
Basiuk, who also held senior positions at the Ministry of Defense, completed his role as the head of the Operations Division in the Israeli Army last summer.
Also dismissed was the head of Military Intelligence at the time of the operation, Reserve General Aharon Haliva, from reserve service by the Chief of Staff, during a phone call.
Haliva stated that he had requested not to serve in the reserves, after resigning from his position and taking full responsibility for his role in the failure, saying, "I requested not to serve in the reserves. I took full responsibility, conducted investigations, and expect the formation of a governmental investigation committee."
The Chief of Staff also decided that General Shlomi Binder, who was the commander of the Operations Brigade at the wing during the attack and is currently serving as the head of Military Intelligence, will only receive a command memo and will not be dismissed.
At his request, he will retire from the Israeli Army only upon completion of his current duties as head of Military Intelligence.
The Chief of Staff also decided that the former commander of the Southern Command, General Yaron Finkelman, who resigned from his position but continued to serve, will be relieved from reserve duty.
Dismissed from reserve duty were also the commander of the Gaza Division, Reserve Brigadier General Avi Rosenfeld, and the commander of the Northern Brigade in the Gaza Division at the time, Reserve Colonel Haim Cohen.
The former commander of the Gaza Division, Lieutenant Colonel A., will also be dismissed from the Israeli Army, and the service of the former head of the Operations Brigade in the Military Intelligence Directorate, Brigadier General J., will be terminated.
Commander of Unit 8200 at the outbreak of the war, Reserve Brigadier General Yossi Sha'ariel, received a summons to appear before the Chief of Staff on Sunday, but was unable to attend due to schedule constraints; however, the Chief of Staff contacted him by phone and informed him of the decision to dismiss him from reserve service.
In this regard, the commander of the Air Force, General Tomer Bar, received a command memo from the Chief of Staff in light of the conclusions of the Turgeman Committee, which included criticism of the Air Force's readiness for ground threats, as well as Hamas's intensive use of drones and flying parachutes, which were used to invade and destroy vital parts of the surveillance and collection devices of the Israeli Army on the border during the "Al-Aqsa Flood" operation.
Navy Commander David Saar Salama also received a crucial note.
The Turgeman Committee concluded, among other things, that the force led by David Saar Salama failed to defend the coast at the beginning of the war, even though it noted that, regarding the Navy and Air Force, the Israeli Army did not raise the alert level and did not change its levels, which would have enabled a quicker response to the scenario that developed.
The Chief of Staff granted a kind of "exoneration" for several officers and decided that there is no obstacle to their continued service in the Israeli Army.
The decisions announced by Zamir were based on the recommendations of the committee chaired by Reserve General Sami Turgeman, which examined the investigations conducted by the army concerning the conduct before October 7. And
The committee did not receive a mandate from Chief of Staff Zamir to recommend the dismissal of any of the officers, but according to Turgeman, his report was supposed to lead to personal conclusions.
The committee's report discussed, among several other matters, the quality of the internal military investigations, considering some good, others modest, and others that should be rejected.
However, the committee expanded its mandate and addressed the same issues, the causes of failure, not just the manner of investigation.
This led to areas in which the committee deepened its examination and investigation, and areas the committee saw, sometimes due to human resource and time constraints, that investment should be reduced.
The committee also highlighted in its conclusions a series of issues that had not been investigated at all within the framework of the investigative teams formed at the time, recommending their study.
This relates, among other things, to all matters relating to obtaining the various versions of Hamas's attack plan, which the Israeli intelligence named "Jericho Wall," and how to handle these materials over the years.
It is not clear why the Turgeman Committee, which investigated deeply into various operational and intelligence issues, extending beyond what was mentioned in the investigations, left the matter for future studies and did not study it themselves.
The string of dismissals tonight comes amid a heated debate about the formation of an investigation committee into the attack on October 7, the events and operations that preceded it, and the entire management of the war.
On the day the Turgeman Committee report was presented, the Chief of Staff expressed his belief in the necessity of forming an "external, methodical, multidisciplinary, and comprehensive" investigation committee, and for the first time since the outbreak of the war, the term "state" was not mentioned.
Even before a few months, unlike his predecessor Hertzi Halevy, Chief of Staff Zamir called for the formation of an official investigation committee to be legally established, appointed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and possessing the authority to issue personal conclusions, such as dismissing all responsible officials, as deemed appropriate.
However, the government headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vehemently rejects the idea of forming an official committee, claiming that "half the population opposes it," while the opposition claims that Netanyahu and his partners aim to exonerate themselves from their role in the failure of October 7.
Last week, the government issued a decision to establish a "National Investigation Committee," then later appointed a ministerial committee chaired by Justice Minister Yariv Levin to determine the investigative powers into the failure of October 7.
