Retired IDF Commander: Netanyahu Doesn't Care About Israel

Jerusalem, 25 January, 2017 (TPS) -- A retired IDF officer lashed out Wednesday at Israel’s senior leadership, especially Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, partly for a series of failures during the 2014 Operation Protective Edge but mostly for a political culture that has greatly weakened the country. 

In a blistering attack against Netanyahu, Major General (res.) Yom Tov Samia, who served as head of the IFD Southern Command from January 2001 to December 2003, said that Israel lacks a prime minister that truly cares about the country, and added his greatest fear as an ordinary civilian is that the country’s political echelon does not understand the principles of leadership on the most basic level. 

“Leadership in general, and national leadership is a team effort, not a one-man show,” Samia fumed. “It isn’t about power struggles and fear mongering. When the prime minister meets with senior ministers once a year for a short update – there is no team work going on there. We have no leadership here that is willing to take risks. It is all about personal interests.” 

Samia said there was no intelligence failure regarding Hamas tunnels into Israeli territory once Operation Protective Edge began He noted that the IDF Intelligence Corps held a one-day seminar in March, 2014 – four months before the military operation and three months before Eyal Yifrah, Gil-Ad Sha’ar and Naftali Fraenkel were kidnapped in Gush Etzion, setting off a string of events that led to Protective Edge – attended boy all relevant military and government players and which outlined the situation on the ground.

“During my first six hours of reserve duty, I got all the intelligence info I needed from two junior officers, a captain and a first lieutenant. It was all there – if the security cabinet had known just 10 percent of what those junior officers knew and understand – things would have gone differently,” Samia said.