Israeli intelligence chief resigns over Oct. 7 attack

now of the Middle East crisis and the man who was the symbol of the failure to prevent the deadliest attack in Israel's history netanyahu's head of military intelligence has resigned the major general is the highest ranking Israeli official to step down since the Hamas Le attack back on October 7th this resignation happening as a special State Department panel here in our nation's capital is also recommending to sanction Israeli military units linked to Human Rights abuses let's bring in our foreign correspondent Tom Sufi bur in Tel Aviv along with our senior policy reporter and flarity so Tom let's just talk about about the resignation first of all of this Major General um do you think he is the sole person responsible for for the lack of intelligence uh that led to that Hamas attack back on October 7th or do you think he's just taking the fall for the Prime Minister well he's certainly not the sole person responsible for that intelligence failure Kira I mean he's definitely one of the people in charge at the time and as you said he headed up Military Intelligence he's still in charge at the moment but he is going to resign and he's the first senior military officer to to resign in connection with those intelligence failings of the Dead for the deadliest terror attack in Israeli history I mean in his resignation letter he effectively says that the intelligence directorate of the IDF simply didn't live up to the task and he says he'll carry that black day with him forever but just to remind people you look Israeli intelligence had a document which they code named the Jericho wall and effectively they had that about a year before the attack actually happened and it was in effect a blueprint of hamas's plan it really was a sort of premonition of the actual tactics that Hamas ended up uh using deploying to get over the Border fence to storm into Southern Israel and to Massacre 1200 people and take hundreds of hostages there were other int intelligence failures too unusual uh SIM card cell phone activity in the hours running up to it warnings from surveillance officers mainly female surveillance officers down on the Gaza border to their superiors which were ultimately ignored so it's a massive massive intelligence failure and although he's the first person to resign the first M senior military officer I don't think he'll be the last so and the US is set now to make this decision on whether to withhold military aid to Israeli units that have been accused of Human Rights abuse what more do we know about exactly what they're being accused of doing yeah K this would be a big deal if this happens we heard from secretary blinkin saying that he was considering it and we've seen reporting that there was one unit in particular an IDF Battalion accused of torture operating in the West Bank this is prior to October 7th which I think is an important thing to note uh but there have been questions about how this Battalion has handled itself now under us law we're not allowed to give Federal money to military units that are accused of gross human rights violations so the question is whether or not uh this has triggered this this law which is called called the Ley act uh blankin says he's looking at it he's going to make a determination in coming days we know he's speaking right now but uh we're not expecting to hear any news on that today we do expect it later this week Kaa all right and thank you Tom appreciate you

Channel: ABC News

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Keywords: abc, abcnl, car, hamas, israel, jerusalem, news, p_cmsid=2494279, p_vid=news-109504265, palestine, pedestrians, war

Id: UKfFduU1i04

Length: 3min 15sec (195 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 22 2024