Halevi spoke at an event on combating antisemitism at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. The general, who commanded the IDF when Hamas attacked, distinguished responsibility for intelligence and operational failures from claims of deliberate cooperation with the enemy. Acknowledging the former, he argued, does not establish the latter.
An Unequivocal Rejection
According to reports by The Jerusalem Post, Ynet and Israel National News, Halevi urged Israel's political leadership to state clearly that there had been no betrayal. He said he knew the people involved and the sequence of events, and rejected the suggestion that colleagues who had risked their lives over decades of service had decided to assist Hamas.
He also argued that cooperation on the scale such an attack would have required could not have rested on a single person. Three years later, he said, nobody belonging to such a network had been found. This was part of his explanation for rejecting the claim, rather than the presentation of a new criminal investigation finding.
Halevi did not use that rejection to absolve the security establishment of responsibility. He said the disaster could have been prevented and that Israel needed to examine why its citizens had not been protected. His call for factual accountability accompanied his rejection of betrayal claims.
The Assessment of Hamas Before the Attack
Halevi described the threat priorities before October 7 as Iran first, Hezbollah second and Hamas third. Israel did not know that Hamas intended an attack of that magnitude, he said. He was explaining the earlier assessment, not announcing a new recommendation for the order in which Israel should confront its enemies.
In his account, the IDF, Shin Bet security service and political leadership had come to believe that Hamas did not want a full war because it sought to demonstrate its ability to govern and provide for Gaza's population. He said the terrorist organization had worked to reinforce that perception.
That was his explanation for the surprise and the misreading of the enemy's intentions. His remarks do not replace a comprehensive inquiry or settle how responsibility should be divided among different institutions and decision makers.
Military Pressure and the Hostages
Halevi maintained that substantial military pressure inside Gaza had been necessary to bring hostages home. He also described efforts to persuade the political leadership to authorize a ground operation instead of continuing a pattern of limited rounds centered on airstrikes.
Alongside that argument, he acknowledged that Israeli strikes had killed hostages whose locations were unknown to the forces involved. He said the deaths were not intentional and that the military had worked to improve its ability to locate captives and reduce such mistakes. The reported remarks did not give a total number of incidents or victims.
His account therefore included both his argument for military pressure and the cost of errors during the fighting. It does not establish that every release or agreement resulted from the same single cause.
The Inquiry Still to Be Completed
Asked about a state commission of inquiry, Halevi said Israel needed to complete its examination, as investigations had been conducted within the IDF. He linked confronting the failures to correcting them, without presenting the existence of military investigations as the end of the discussion.
He referred to Shiri Bibas to convey the human meaning of failing to reach civilians in time to save them. That example brought the discussion of strategic assessments back to the military's basic duty to protect.
The speech did not announce the establishment of a commission or a date for its findings. Halevi's position was that Israel must continue examining responsibility and correcting its failures while rejecting the betrayal claims he explicitly dismissed.
