Halevi Calls October 7 Preventable and Rejects Claims of Internal Betrayal

Former IDF chief of staff Herzi Halevi said on November 1 that Hamas’s October 7 attack could have been prevented, while rejecting allegations that betrayal inside Israel’s security establishment enabled it. Speaking at Shurat HaDin’s conference in New York, he called for a full examination of the failures and urged political leaders to reject the betrayal allegations clearly. “October 7 was a failure that could have been prevented,” Halevi said. He argued that helping Hamas carry out an attack of that scale would have required an extensive network of collaborators. Drawing on his knowledge of the personnel and the events, he said no such collaborator had emerged in the three years since the attack. He also called for a state commission of inquiry and said difficult questions must be confronted, as the military had done in its own examinations. Halevi described the prewar assessment that Hamas preferred governing Gaza to launching a war. He said that view was shared by the IDF, Shin Bet and political leadership, and that Hamas had deliberately reinforced it. In his account, Israel’s threat priorities before the attack placed Iran first, Hezbollah second and Hamas third. Discussing the subsequent fighting, Halevi maintained that military pressure helped bring hostages back. He also acknowledged that Israeli bombs had unintentionally killed hostages whose locations were unknown, and said the military later improved its ability to identify where hostages were being held.