Former Shabak security chief Carmi Gillon, who resigned after the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin, spoke for the first time since October 7 about the failures that allowed the fatal Hamas attack.
“What happened on October 7 was impossible to imagine. The fact that the citizens of the State of Israel have participated in all the wars since the Second Lebanon War – because of rockets – does not take into account the occupation of Israeli land, as well as the killing and kidnapping of civilians.” “I have no explanation for the actions of the intelligence services. I believe that as the fighting continues and more facts about Hamas training are revealed, it will become clear that the intelligence failure was huge,” Gillon said in an interview with News 12.
According to him, it was difficult for him to digest the massacre for many days.
“My cousin was killed in Be’eri, and I was at a ceremony in his memory where I heard firsthand about this terrible massacre and began to understand.”
As for the need for the head of SHABAK to take responsibility for the failure, Gillon said:
“I think Ronen Bar feels – and he has expressed it publicly – a very heavy sense of responsibility. In the meantime, he must continue to act and continue to wage war against terrorism. Sinwar will not be found with intelligence and tanks in any way, except in a surgical operation”. “In my opinion, the war is over. In my opinion, the only reason why the IDF continues to fight is for the return of the kidnapped. Military pressure in the Gaza Strip is the only thing that can bring the abductees home.”
“We have started a war of revenge, and it is absolutely justified in light of what we have been through. There is not a single citizen in the country who does not bear the burden of this war on his shoulders, directly or indirectly. Today’s war is simply the return of the kidnapped. Hamas has been hit, and it will remain the ruling body in the sector until a vacuum is created and there is no one to fill it. So far, everyone has left Gaza. Maybe the fire will stop for five or six years and the ritual of rocket attacks will return. But the events of October 7, in my opinion, will not happen again”.
Gillon responded to his words on Shabbat Tarbut: “The State of Israel is becoming more right-wing. There are religious right-wingers who want to take over the lives of all Israeli citizens by the most proven and powerful means of all – like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, like ISIS, like Hamas and like Khomeini’s Iranian revolution – to take over the lives of all.
He explained that it was a promotion for his book discussing the characters from it. “The conversation is about a thriller book I wrote called “Messiah”. I was talking about the population that plays a major role in the thriller book that I wrote. It was a promotional event for the book. I’m talking about the worldview of the characters in the thriller I published in 2020. If you ask me, there are Jewish underground groups in the State of Israel today and in the past, for example, who believed that the Dome of the Rock should be blown up in the State of Israel and the Kingdom of the Sanhedrin should be established here”.
