LONDON: Israel’s former military intelligence chief has claimed that the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza were necessary “as a message for future generations.”
Aharon Haliva can be heard in an audio broadcast by Israel’s Channel 12 saying that 50 Palestinians should die for every one Israeli killed in the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, Israeli media reported.
“It does not matter now if they are children,” he said. “There’s no choice, they need a Nakba every now and then to feel the consequences.”
Nakba refers to the “catastrophe” of 1948 when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced to flee their homes and land during the foundation of the Israeli state.
Haliva, who resigned last year over intelligence failings surrounding the Oct. 7 attacks, can be heard justifying the devastating death toll in Gaza, which he put at 50,000.
The slaughter by Israel’s forces reached that figure in March, suggesting his comments are several months old, with the number of people killed now more than 62,000, Gaza health officials said on Monday.
Haliva’s comments are a rare acknowledgement from a senior Israeli figure of the true scale of the bloodshed in Gaza. Even if Israel’s claim earlier this year that it had killed 20,000 militants in the territory was accurate, that would still suggest Haliva accepts the vast majority of victims are civilians.
He is even considered a moderate within the Israeli political spectrum that is now dominated by hardline figures like Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir in senior ministerial positions.
The extensive recordings sparked anger among Palestinians and Israeli human rights groups.
“The remarks by former head of military intelligence Aharon Haliva are part of a long line of official statements that expose a deliberate policy of genocide,” B’Tselem said on X.
In a statement to Channel 12, Haliva said the recordings came from a “forum setting.”
In the recording, he also discussed the intelligence failings leading up to Oct. 7, when Hamas and other militants attacked southern Israel killing 1,200 people and seizing 250 hostages.
He said no one could have imagined what happened on the morning of the attack after years of strategic assumptions that Hamas had been deterred from carrying out such an action.
The Shin Bet internal security service also should take the blame along with the military, Haliva said.
