The resignation of IDF intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva and the IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi officially replacing him with newly promoted Maj. Gen. Shlomi Binder on Wednesday night was a watershed moment for Israeli national security.
There are a variety of takeaways that are critical to note, many of which may not be obvious without properly connecting all the dots of the major events of the last year:
1. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu so far has won the battle of the inquiries into October 7 hands down. This may change at some point, but we are now coming toward 11 months since the disastrous invasion that happened on his watch, and despite a majority of the public wanting a state inquiry of all those involved, including Netanyahu, his uncompromising resistance so far has kept him in power and without an immediate threat of elections.
Once again, this may change, especially if the Haredi parties decide to topple him due to their losing government subsidies over the unrelated IDF draft issue, but there is no timeline for him to face serious questioning or electoral consequences due to October 7.
There was a brief now forgotten moment in February when Halevi leaked that part of the military’s probes would be an external probe with overtones of looking at broader strategic issues, which could have implicated the political echelon. Under harrowing criticism from Netanyahu’s lieutenants, but with no real card they could have played to force him to back down, Halevi retreated and limited the probes to the IDF’s conduct. Haliva briefly mentioned the need for a state inquiry for one five-second line over his long speech on Wednesday, but it simply is not a reality right now.
2. Haliva and IDF intelligence are taking the lion’s share of the blame to date. Haliva announced his resignation around four months ago, and also the top IDF intelligence analysis chief and IDF southern commence intelligence chief resigned months ago. As many times as Halevi complimented Haliva for his mostly successful 38 years in the IDF, he mentioned Haliva’s failure over and over again as well. In an unprecedented moment, when Haliva mentioned his family, he started to cry and had to halt his speech for several moments. No one present remembered a top defense official publicly crying at such a ceremony. If some officials want to avoid responsibility, Haliva truly feels it.
Will other top IDF officials remain or resign?
3. Meanwhile, Halevi, Shin Bet Chief Ronen Bar, IDF Southern Command Chief Yaron Finkleman, and others have stayed on. They have hinted that they will resign, but the conditions for them to resign have evolved and gone long past initial expectations of resignation within three to six months. At some point, it was thought that the main war in Gaza would be over much earlier, that all the IDF probes would be out by June, and that Netanyahu would agree to early elections, in which case Halevi and Bar might have resigned already in June. Now, it is unclear if they will connect their resignations to Netanyahu calling early elections (meaning possibly no early resigning) or whether one or more may resign around October 7.
4. Unit 8200 Chief Brig. Gen. Yossi Sariel and others in his unit have also gotten a pass so far. Though Sariel has also hinted that he would resign at some point, that point has been no earlier than the probe he is conducting of himself (as opposed to an external review) and his unit concludes, which continues to be pushed back – from August to maybe October to maybe later.
5. Binder takes command of IDF intelligence under a cloud. Halevi has certified that Binder’s role in the Operations Command was not part of the October 7 failure, and the High Court of Justice struck down a petition to block the appointment, clearing Binder’s way for one of the most powerful jobs in the entire defense establishment, not just within the IDF.
However, since the probes of IDF Operations Command and other probes have not yet been publicized and may still be weeks or months away, he takes office under a cloud of criticism for what his role might have been under October 7. Also, many, even in the defense establishment, are not ready to take Halevi’s word that Binder’s actions on October 7 were sufficient because many believe that Halevi himself should have resigned months ago.
Binder has been publicly silent about his role in the Operations Command and explaining why he was not partially responsible for the fact that even after the initial surprise of Hamas’s invasion (which can be blamed on intelligence), it took several hours or more than half a day for most units to get to the South, despite Israel’s tiny geography. Many are asking how Binder can be the great reformer and rebuilder of IDF intelligence to restore the public’s faith when he may still be tainted.
Incoming intel. chief speaks of reforming IDF intelligence
6. It is unclear how far and fast Binder will reform IDF intelligence. In a relatively deadpan and thoroughly cerebral speech, Binder committed to reforming and fixing IDF intelligence failures from October 7. In the immediate future, observers are watching whether he will quickly force out Sariel and others who have managed to hang on longer than expected.
In the longer term, the question is whether he can break the IDF’s groupthink problem. The military is a hierarchical organization. No matter how many times top commanders say they want officers to disagree with them, everyone sees that it is the commanders who get along best with the top officials who get promoted.
Binder will need to promote to high posts people who disagree with him and who he may not like as much personally but who he realizes are invaluable professionally because they provide contrary perspectives. But expectations for this are not high. No one has heard about “V”, the one junior intelligence officer who correctly predicted Hamas’s invasion, getting a big promotion for being right when her commanders ignored her. And it is simply not human nature and the opposite of how the army often functions. But if this does not change, Israel may face greater failures with Iran and Hezbollah.
7. Will IDF intelligence get the Iran and Hezbollah crisis correct? Binder was supposed to take over as head of IDF intelligence twice before at earlier dates, and each time, the changeover was delayed, partially because of heightened threats from Iran and Hezbollah. When it finally became clear that the crisis with Tehran and Beirut could drag out for more than a couple of weeks, Halevi decided to stop postponing.
But that means that in his first days in office, Binder needs to not make even a slight misjudgment that could lead to any war with Iran or Hezbollah which the government does not intend. Moreover, he must make sure that Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Hezbollah Chief Hassan Nasrallah do not succeed in catching Jerusalem by surprise in a way that could make October 7 look tame.
One of the reasons that Haliva was ultimately forced out first among Israel’s top defense officials was that he misjudged Iran in April, leading to a massive aerial attack on the Jewish state. Binder will need to avoid making such a mistake at the same time as he helps shape Israel’s new security doctrine for Gaza for the next decade or more, at the same time as handling the West Bank and other fronts.