Dismissed Israeli ex-military intelligence head Aharon Haliva has sparked outrage after leaked tapes showed him defending massive Palestinian casualties as retaliation for Hamas's 7 October 2023 attack. In remarks broadcast on Israel's Channel 12, Haliva announced that for every Israeli murdered that day, 50 Palestinians "have to die," coolly adding that "it does not matter anymore if they are children."
Haliva characterized Gaza's mortality count over 50,000, as reported by the enclave's health authorities as "necessary" to deliver a warning to "coming generations" of Palestinians. He took it further, invoking the Nakba of 1948, in which over 700,000 Palestinians had been pushed out of their homes at the time of Israel's establishment, and positing that such catastrophes ought to occur "every now and then" to remind of the "price" of resistance.
What is so noteworthy about Haliva's statements is that, in contrast to current Israeli officials who habitually rebuff Gaza casualty reports as false propaganda, he seemed to be corroborating them. Gaza's health ministry in March reported a total of over 50,000 deaths, which was then over 60,000. Standalone studies and previous wars have repeatedly proved these numbers to be credible.
According to Israel's own estimate, some 20,000 fighters were killed, which means most of the dead were civilians many of them women and children. Haliva's words are one of the strongest admissions from within the ranks of Israel's military of intentional collective punishment, a crime defined as illegal under international law.
"Already there are 50,000 dead in Gaza and that is needed and necessary for the future generations," Haliva claimed in the recordings. "For all that was done on October 7th… it doesn't matter anymore if they are children."
Despite the shocking nature of his remarks, mainstream Israeli outlets largely downplayed them. Instead, coverage focused on Haliva’s criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his warnings about systemic intelligence failures that enabled Hamas’s attack.
The contrast indicates the stark gap between speech within Israel and international views of the war. Internationally, Haliva's words are being interpreted as proof of genocidal language long employed by Israeli leaders, where Palestinians have been referred to as "human animals," with officials openly calling for the destruction of Gaza.
Haliva, who resigned in April 2024, is generally viewed as a centrist critic of Israel's extreme right-wing cabinet, specifically ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir. But his words reveal the extent to which acceptance even among centrists of policies that wreck havoc on civilians prevails.
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In the same interviews, Haliva reported that a fellow member of the intelligence directorate had once said to him it was "lucky" that so many October 7 victims were left-wing peace activists. "If this had happened to us, the right, you wouldn't have gone to war like this," he reported the fellow member saying.
This peek behind the scenes of internal debate reveals not only the profound fissures within Israeli society but also the way political divisions inform military choices.
