No one on any end of the political spectrum will agree with this, but: Herzi Halevi is a tragic, unsung hero.
Tragic, because he was the IDF chief during which the October 7, 2023, invasion happened on his watch, leading to the worst Israeli defeat since the 1973 Yom Kippur War and leading him to resign in March 2025, about a year earlier than the standard three-year term.
Hero, because he was a top level special forces commando for years, then a commander of the special forces, then a forward commander during the 2008-9 invasion who was prevented from dealing Hamas a larger blow in Rafah by political-diplomatic considerations, then head of IDF intelligence and the southern command, then deputy chief - and then the IDF chief who beat Hamas in northern Gaza, Khan Yunis, and Rafah in three successive invasions from October 2023-summer 2024 including killing Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif, bludgeoned Hezbollah from September-November fall 2024 including killing Hassan Nasrallah, destroyed Iran's most advanced Russian S-300 anti aircraft missile systems in October 2024, and planned the Rising Lion operation from October 2024-March 2025 (including rebuilding much of the air force's strike capabilities even prior to October 2023.)
Unsung, because that long list of his accomplishments will be forever (or at least for the coming years) overshadowed by the horrible stain of October 7.
All of this has been true for over a year, but it is time to write about it now for a few reasons.
First, Halevi has now gone more than a year since his resignation without making his own case publicly. This is probably an error on his part, but he has always been a better general than a public relations manager.
'In The War Room' on shelves this September
Second, I have a new book coming out in September called In The War Room (with the Wall Street Journal's Elliot Kaufman) in which a complex, detailed, and nuanced portrayal of Halevi and other top Israeli and SS decision-makers is given, but it has already become clear to me that various people and media may cherry pick portions of the book that are critical, while ignoring the larger portions which are positive, so as to present him in a selective negative light.
Some of those who will do this will do so because they will fail to read the whole book or understand all of the nuances that the book unpacks
Others, and this is the third point, will do so because of the upcoming Israeli elections.
Once election season starts, everything becomes black and white. A leader was a success or a failure. And anyone else who was around who shares in your success takes away from your credit, so better to label them a complete unmitigated failure.
Many in the upcoming elections have been blaming Halevi for October 7 for years, in no small part to avoid their own contributory responsibility.
Let there be no doubt: Halevi is responsible for October 7 - along with all of the other top defense chiefs, and all of the political chiefs, over a period of many years - some say going back a decade and some two decades - in which there was a "conceptica", a conceptual framework, which incorrectly assumed Hamas as it was constituted, could be easily contained and deterred, and did not need to be treated as an invasion threat. This conceptual framework also avoided even limited diplomatic initiatives for an extended period, hoping Hamas and the Palestinians more broadly could just be ignored.
And since I am someone who has gotten to know Halevi - the IDF's military reporters group gets periodic group access to most of the IDF's top officials at one point or another - I know that he truly takes responsibility for his role regarding October 7. He does not just say he has a contributory responsibility generically; he adds, "I personally am among those responsible," which is why he resigned early.
But it is profoundly simplistic to think that one man, even the IDF chief at the time, was solely or primarily responsible.
When Halevi came into office in January 2023, he did not just adopt everything his predecessors had done; he also had new initiatives and ideas.
But there were certain built-in limits and rules of the game.
Definitely during the terms of Gabi Ashkenazi (2007-2011), Benny Gantz (2011-2015), Gadi Eisenkot (2015-2019), and Aviv Kohavi (2019-2023), who preceded him, the determination by both the Israeli political [from Ehud Olmert (2006-2009) to Benjamin Netanyahu for most of those years (2009-2021), to Naftali Bennett (2021-2022], and back to Netanyahu (late 2022-current) and defense top echelons (including the Shin Bet and the Mossad) was that larger conflict with Hamas was to be avoided in order to try to "manage" the conflict.
This misplaced thinking was so deep that mid-level Israeli intelligence officials never even passed on to Halevi and other IDF high command officials the Walls of Jericho plan, which IDF intelligence intercepted more than a year before October 7.
It was so deep that in a moment of impressive and haunted honesty, Halevi admitted that if he had been shown the plan, it might have made him a bit more concerned when he was warned about Hamas making trouble around 3:00-5:00 a.m. hours before the invasion, but really, probably he would have made the same basic decisions. He has explained this was because it was ingrained among all of Israel that Hamas simply would not dare to be crazy enough to invade. Any contrary information then was reflexively explained away.
Halevi was among the first to take public responsibility for October 7, even as many Israeli officials delayed doing so or did so with so many qualifications that it is hard to say whether they ever took responsibility.
Taking responsibility and resigning were themselves a contribution in an age when public officials worldwide, not just in Israel, have started to treat taking responsibility as a disease and prefer to redirect, change the subject, or "double down" on blaming someone else.
And with all we know today, maybe he could have been more aggressive in calling up much larger reinforcements (a small number of reinforcements were called up), just in case there was some horror scenario which no one expected, instead of worrying so much about exposing Israeli intelligence collection sources to Hamas, which was one reason (it turned out to be grossly mistaken) why he wanted to avoid too many large Israeli moves.
And that is only part of Halevi's legacy.
Those who criticize him personally the harshest for October 7, as opposed, also seem to create a bizarre dichotomy in which he is only responsible for any IDF failures as chief, but not successes.
This is not how responsibility works. He is responsible for both the successes and the failures.
His invasions of Gaza did not just beat Hamas. Some of his new tactics led to a stunningly low number of Israeli soldier casualties.
It did not take several months to beat Hamas in northern Gaza, and thousands of Israeli soldiers were not killed. Most of the big battles were done in a few weeks, and Israeli casualties were in the hundreds, compared to more than 10,000 Hamas casualties killed in a relatively short time.
There were similar results in Khan Yunis, and in Rafah, with Rafah also having a stunning success that the IDF managed to evacuate 900,000 or more Gazans in around a week, with tiny civilian casualties in relative terms during the initial major evacuation (though later there were steady civilian casualties in Gaza before and after that push as the war dragged on.) Netanyahu, then-defense minister Yoav Gallant, and the Shin Bet all deserve tremendous credit as well, but not at the expense of the IDF chief.
Legitimate criticism can be given to Halevi, Netanyahu, Gallant, Gantz, and others about the decision to parse the war into more drawn-out pieces, and they explain in our book why, especially with regard to the Hezbollah threat, they believed this was necessary.
Less thoughtful critics have also said he opposed Mossad chief David Barnea's beeper operation.
This is false.
There is a highly nuanced debate covered in the book about the timing of the beepers and of killing Nasrallah and about whether it would have made sense or not to let the Biden administration know beforehand, as Israel did in many other instances. One can agree or disagree with Halevi's nuanced position on those issues, covered in my book, but both his position and others' positions on those issues were serious, well-thought-out positions.
In any event, the bottom-line was that once the Mossad exploded its beepers, the IDF under Halevi took full advantage and hit Hezbollah so hard that it lost around 70% of its giant missile arsenal and many of its top leaders. Netanyahu, Gallant, Barnea, and others all deserve tremendous credit as well, but not to the exclusion of the IDF chief.
Hezbollah remains a real threat today, but is a shadow of its former self.
Likewise, many say that Halevi should get no credit against Iran since he was no longer IDF chief when Rising Lion occurred in June 2025.
While current IDF Chief Eyal Zamir deserves tremendous credit for his managing the operation and the immediate lead up to it, as well as Netanyahu, Barnea, and others, Halevi's October 2024 attacks on Iran and five months of preparation, including with critical meetings in Washington, set the stage for much of what was to occur.
There will be an endless debate, which my book does explore, about whether Halevi, Barnea, Netanyahu, Gallant, earlier in the war Benny Gantz, and others could have gotten the Israeli hostages back earlier or whether returning them in October 2025 was the best option.
But at least two rounds of hostage deals happened on his watch, along with those other top officials.
There are legitimate debates, which Halevi took part in, about whether the war should have been ended sooner to jump on Saudi normalization or whether the price for that would have been too high.
So why is Halevi so quiet and so attacked?
He comes off as a philosopher
Part of it is that he does not fit into the classic Israeli general: super loud, chest-beating, alpha male mold.
In person, he comes off more as a giant (he is one of the tallest Israeli defense chiefs), relatively slow-talking philosopher, alternatively sprinkling in quotes from the Bible, the Talmud (Halevi is religious), and broader world thinkers like Claus von Clausewitz.
In his seemingly bizarre but later prophetic inaugural speech, he said he hoped to live up to the standard set by IDF chief David Elazar, who resigned in disgrace after the Yom Kippur War.
Halevi's reasoning was powerful, but uniquely his own (since few people would pick an IDF chief forced to resign early): that Elazar faced horrible odds and choices, but lifted himself and the country out of the depths of despair to achieve a lasting victory. Here, Halevi was referring to the point that, however badly the Yom Kippur war started for Israel, by the end, it had completely routed Egypt and Syria, eventually also partially setting up the peace treaty with Cairo.
Add that together with his general silent and understated public demeanor, and the benefit for many public officials of transferring all the nation-wide blame onto him, and he is the perfect scapegoat.
In an age when nuance, honor, and truth are sometimes ignored, though I will gain nothing essentially by putting out this true and complex story, it is important that Halevi be recognized not just for areas where he failed, but also for his contributions to Israeli security and national integrity.