CNN
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A former Israel Defense Forces spokesman has sharply criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conduct of the war against Hamas, the latest sign of growing tensions between the military and the government.
Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said he spoke to the world’s media on behalf of the military, recognizing the “loss of international confidence in Israel and the government’s failure to sustain broad support for the war against Hamas over time.” Lerner served in the Israeli army for more than 25 years – most recently as a wartime spokesman before resigning last month.
Lerner spoke in an extensive interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
“Netanyahu promised a complete victory over Hamas,” he said. “But on the international stage, he and his government led us to defeat.”
Lerner told Haaretz that in the early days of the conflict, after Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, “there was a clear understanding that Hamas is an evil and dangerous organization and that Israel must take action against it.”
That goodwill quickly eroded, he said, partly because of the inevitable suffering of Palestinian civilians when the Israeli army began its ground offensive in Gaza. But he also blamed the government: “There is no political strategy for the war, even after nine months of fighting on two fronts.”
Lerner said that as he was increasingly asked about the goals of the operation, “I quickly realized that I had no answers to these questions, not because they had not yet been decided, but because they simply were not being decided.”
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Lt. Col. Peter Lerner speaks in an interview with CNN on April 15.
He said he felt like “a soldier on guard without bullets… I don’t have the ammunition I need to answer the interviewers’ questions. I just had to say that I was speaking on behalf of the army and that these questions were the government’s responsibility. But the government didn’t have any answers either because it was politically inconvenient.”
Lerner also criticized ministers who, in his opinion, had undermined the legitimacy of Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip.
“Hamas has damaged almost all the power lines that connect Gaza to Israel,” he said. “We had the opportunity to come here and say: Hamas is harming the citizens of Gaza and we, Israel, will try to make amends, but only if they stop shooting. Instead, the then Energy Minister Israel Katz made populist statements about cutting off their electricity and not supplying them with fuel.”
Lerner quoted a 2016 remark by Netanyahu that the test in the area of propaganda is very simple: Were your hands tied when you tried to defend yourself?
He said the prime minister had “failed miserably in this test. The US and Britain are cutting off arms supplies, France is banning us from participating in a major arms exhibition. We have delayed the invasion of Rafah for months. This matter requires a state commission of inquiry, just like the failures of October 7.”
Lerner’s remarks follow numerous reports of tensions between Netanyahu and the Israeli military leadership.
Last week, Netanyahu rejected the idea of a ceasefire in Gaza as long as Hamas remains in power. Earlier, the New York Times published an article quoting six current and former security officials who said a ceasefire would give Israeli troops time to prepare for a possible ground war with Hezbollah.
The officials, most of whom spoke anonymously to “discuss sensitive security issues,” also said a ceasefire would be the most effective way to secure the release of the Israeli hostages.
Former Israeli security adviser Eyal Hulata, who the Times said is in regular contact with “senior military officials,” made the official statement, saying: “The military fully supports a hostage-taking deal and a ceasefire… it believes it can return and attack Hamas militarily at any time in the future.”
In a statement, Netanyahu said: “I do not know who these anonymous sources are, but I am here to make it unequivocally clear: This will not happen. The war will end once Israel has achieved all of its goals, including the destruction of Hamas and the release of all our hostages.”
The report came just days after Israel’s top military spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said Hamas could not be destroyed and that anyone who said otherwise was “pulling dust in the eyes of the public” – an implicit criticism of Netanyahu, who has repeatedly promised to destroy the group.
