A public battle has reignited between different elements of the IDF Southern Command over who is to blame for the October 7, 2023, disaster.
Channel 12 published on Wednesday morning a battle between IDF Southern Command Chief Maj.-Gen. Yaron Finkleman and IDF Southern Command Operations Chief Col. Efraim Avni over a fault related to the disaster. This fight is part of a broader one in which Avni’s promotion was frozen in November.
In a multidimensional chess game, it is also part of a different, broader fight between the IDF Southern Command and other elements in the defense and political establishments over shifting blame for the disaster.
Most of the main details regarding Finkleman’s involvement and other top political and defense officials’ involvement have been steadily leaked out over the last 15 months. Still, on Wednesday morning, Channel 12 added the detail that Avni had recommended to Finkleman to wake up all of the IDF southern battalion commanders at 3:00 a.m. on October 7 to rush them back to their posts on an emergency basis.
Finkleman both initially and finally rejected Avni’s recommendation at 3:00 a.m. and again at 4:00 a.m. respectively.
Despite Finkleman’s decision, the report said that Avni himself returned to his post on an emergency basis.
The report does not emphasize that Finkleman himself also left a vacation outing in the middle of the night to return to his post on an emergency basis.
The Jerusalem Post has learned that Finkleman returned to his post thinking that the new intelligence about a possible move by Hamas could mean an attempt to carry out a limited anti-tank missile ambush, the limited operation to kidnap a few hostages, or some other elevated, but still relatively small and contained threat.
Given that his view, and the view of most of the IDF and political class, was that Hamas was far too deterred from trying a major invasion – such as what it carried out – he did not want to wake others in his command unnecessarily.
An embarrassing decision
In retrospect, this decision was an embarrassing one for him, and decisions by the IDF Chief of Staff, Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi and Shin Bet (Israel News Agency) Director Ronen Bar, along with some IDF intelligence officials (though strangely they did not wake up IDF intelligence chief Aharon Haliva) not to take any major moves to reinforce the border, were also embarrassing.
The state prosecution is probing some aides of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for allegedly altering the record regarding aspects of what he knew that night and when. However, the full details have not been leaked, and Netanyahu himself has blocked even the start of a probe for 15 months.
Avni could be settling scores with Finkleman regarding his frozen appointment, given that Defense Minister Israel Katz said in November he was freezing Avni’s promotion pending receiving the probe results about his actions on October 7.
The latest revelations could help Avni versus Finkleman and others by presenting him as having tried to avoid the October 7 disaster but having faced deaf ears from his superiors.
Avni also may be seeking to settle scores with Finkleman and others, given that he was rebuked for bringing Rabbi Zvi Kustener into Gaza in late November without authorization.
Kustener has been blocked from public interactions with IDF soldiers due to statements he has made against the LGBTQ+ community,
The issue of civilians being brought into war zones without proper high-level authorization started to receive greater attention after civilian archaeologist Zeev “Jabo” Erlich was killed along with a soldier in a Lebanon war zone he was brought without proper authorization.
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