Jerusalem
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In the leaked audio, we can hear the former Israeli military intelligence chief saying that the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza are “needed and necessary for future generations.”
“For everything that happened on October 7th, for everyone on October 7th, 50 Palestinians need to die,” Major General Ahalong Hariba, Israeli Defense Force (IDF), said in a recording released by Israeli Channel 12 News on Friday. “It doesn’t matter now whether they’re children or not.”
“The fact that there are already 50,000 deaths in Gaza is necessary and necessary for future generations,” Haliba said in the recording.
It is unclear when he was speaking, but the number of people killed in Gaza exceeded 50,000 in March.
“There’s no choice. Sometimes you need a Nakba to feel the price,” Hariba said. The Arabic Naqba, or Arabic “catastrophe,” is an original event in Palestinian history, which was fled or expelled from its home in 1948 by armed Jewish groups during the establishment of the state of Israel.
Haliba was the head of Israeli military intelligence on October 7, 2023, and Hamas launched an attack on southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and tempted another 250 people. He resigned from his position in April 2024 over his “leadership responsibility” and became the first senior IDF officer to do so.
The lengthy recording appears to be from a long conversation with Haliba, but Channel 12 does not identify who the retired officer is speaking to. Hariba’s central argument throughout the recording is that the Israeli military is not a responsibility organization for the failures that led to the October 7 attack.
He holds Israeli political leadership and Sing Bett, an internal security service that Hamas believes will not attack.
In a statement to Israeli Channel 12, Haliba said the recording was “said on the Closed Forum and I just regret it.”
He says that recordings are “a fragment of a partial thing and cannot reflect the whole picture – indeed, when it comes to complex and detailed issues, most of them are highly categorized.”
Israel faces an increasing number of criticism of the war in Gaza and the new plan to occupy Gaza city. Last week, New Zealand Prime Minister Christopal Luxon said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “lost a conspiracy” and that Gaza city’s acquisition was “completely, completely unacceptable.”
“Netanyahu is now a problem with his own,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Fredericksen said in an interview with the Zillands Posten newspaper on Friday.
In a statement, Hamas condemned Haliba’s remarks, saying the audio recordings “confirm that crimes against our people are high-level decisions and formal policies from enemy political and security leaders.”
A UN Special Committee report released last November said Israeli actions in Gaza were “consistent with the characteristics of genocide.” Last month, two Israeli human rights groups accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. The Israeli military said the conclusion was “completely unfounded.”
Israel has repeatedly denied the genocide accusations and said it is acting in accordance with international law.
