Ehud Barak says more than two decades ago he was new enough in Israeli politics to tell the truth. He declared then that if he was a Palestinian, he’d probably be a terrorist.

He describes Hamas’s violent October 7 attack – in which about 1,200 people were killed and around 240 kidnapped – as “the worst failure of our intelligence and operational forces since the establishment of the state of Israel”.

“That the IDF is doing everything to avoid civilian casualties is a blunt lie. Straight lie,” former Israeli army commander Yehuda Shaul says.

“And that’s a hard statement to say about my own army, but it’s the truth.”

Shaul says what Israel is currently doing in Gaza is not going to deliver security for Israel but “sow the seeds of hatreds for generations to come”.

“The end goal is to annex the land. It doesn’t take a genius to come up with that conclusion.”

Source: Israel’s defence and intelligence insiders on the Gaza war and why Netanyahu won’t stop – ABC News