All the senior intelligence officers who were responsible for ensuring the security of Israel’s southern sector ahead of Hamas’s surprise attack on Oct. 7 have moved to other important positions in the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate, Army Radio reported on Sunday.
Four lieutenant colonels, each responsible for a different intelligence branch in the IDF Southern Command on Oct. 7 and who failed to anticipate Hamas’s intentions, have advanced to new commands, the station’s Doron Kadosh reported.
Lt. Col. “Nun,” head of the intelligence branch responsible for ‘hostile sabotage activities,’ whose job it was to alert the IDF to such incidents in the Gaza sector, has become head of the same branch for the Judea and Samaria sector.
Meanwhile, the Southern Command’s deputy intelligence officer, who was also head of its digital branch, will join a classified military intelligence unit in a senior position.
The head of the target branch, responsible for gathering intelligence on targets in the Gaza Strip, will join a unit at intelligence headquarters, which partners with the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) and deals with terrorist funding.
Finally, the head of the field branch will take a senior staff position at Unit 9900, the Intelligence Directorate’s Visual Intelligence collection unit.
Most of the four officers have already started in their new positions, Army Radio reported.
The appointments were decided by the previous head of Military Intelligence, Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva, who submitted his resignation in April over his failure to warn of Oct. 7. Haliva left the post and retired from the army on Aug. 21.
“On Saturday, October 7, 2023, Hamas carried out a murderous surprise attack against the State of Israel, the consequences of which are difficult and painful. The Intelligence Directorate under my command did not live up to the task it was entrusted with,” Haliva wrote to IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi in his resignation letter.
Lapses
The report on the four lieutenant colonels comes two days after it was revealed that a former intelligence officer in the Southern Command, identified only as Lt. Col. “A,” was removed from his post for carrying out a romantic affair with a female officer subordinate.
Despite this ethical lapse, and his own responsibility for the intelligence failure on Oct. 7, Lt. Col. “A” was appointed IDF representative at the Israel National Cyber Directorate.
Lt. Col. Yossi Sariel, head of Unit 8200, also remains at his post despite calls for his removal.
Unit 8200, Israel’s signals intelligence unit, is the IDF’s largest intelligence gathering unit.
An intelligence system that normally supplied important information on Hamas in use by Unit 8200 was down on the night of Oct. 6 due to a malfunction and fixed only after the Gazan terrorists had infiltrated Israel, Channel 12 reported.
The system, whose nature was not detailed, won an Israel Security Prize for its contribution to the country’s security.
However, former senior officers in the unit told Channel 12 that the system was down because it was neglected by Sariel, who dismissed its importance.
Although the identity of Unit 8200’s commander is normally a closely guarded secret, The Guardian outed Sariel’s identity in April due to a security lapse on his part when he published a book on Amazon.
Sariel authored The Human Machine Team, which offers a future vision regarding the relationship between human and artificial intelligence.
An electronic version of the book included an anonymous email address traced to Sariel’s name and Google account, leading the British paper to reveal the spy chief’s identity.
The IDF called the exposure of Sariel’s personal details “a mistake” and said, “The issue will be examined to prevent the recurrence of similar cases in the future.”