Haim Ramon, former Minister and MK, mounts an attack against Amn’s decision to appoint Itay Baron to the position of head of the research division, even if temporarily. Ramon wrote a post on his account on the X network, in which he detailed Baron’s positions.
The full post:
The appointment of Brigadier General Itai Baron to the temporary research chief shows that the Chief of Staff and the Minister of Defense learned nothing from the seven in October and did not forget anything from the dangerous illusions they held before the Hamas attack.
During his tenure as a research lieutenant, between 2011 and 2015, Brigadier General Baron was the one who led the “Hamas bride” concept that destroyed every good part of the intelligence division. For his performance in the “Tzuk Eitan” operation, Baron received a comment in the state comptroller’s report for not presenting the threat of the tunnels “in its full force and significance” to the members of the cabinet.
Even after his release from the IDF, Baron, in his role as deputy head of the research institute at INSS, continued to promote this damned conception, to see Hamas as open to dialogue, and to spread the illusion of “the deterred Hamas” that helped blind the military and political ranks to the danger inherent in the Hamas devil.
Thus, for example, in November 2019, Baron explained that “Hamas has had seven conflicts and wars – they probably realized that the public in Gaza would not turn against them if they stood aside.” In January 2020, Baron wrote in the INSS’s “Strategic Assessment of Israel 2019-2020” report, that Hamas does not wish for escalation, and recommended to the political level “to mark Hamas as a temporary responsible address in the Gaza Strip and to obtain a prolonged cease-fire with it, in exchange for extensive economic concessions.” In May 2021, during the “Guardian of the Walls” operation, Baron estimated that the deterrence of Hamas had been achieved.
In April 2023, in an extensive interview with “Haaretz” newspaper, Baron explained that for the “old” problems of the intelligence, “biases of perception of various kinds, the failure of imagination, adherence to a conception”, “we have found solutions. They’re not airtight, but we’ve come to some sort of agreement. We want the best information we can get into the room, as well as a plurality of opinions. This is actually part of the Israeli lesson after 1973. No more determination, but doubts, debate, pluralism.”
But in reality, the intelligence, the Chief of Staff and the Minister of Defense not only insist on sticking to the concept that led to the Seventh of October disaster, but they are determined to continue appointing people who are consistently and resolutely wrong, who hold only one opinion, who were impervious to any different opinion, and who will lead us to more disasters in the future.
The public should demand that everyone who was part of the concept at the political level, the military level, and the public level, should refrain from engaging in public affairs for the foreseeable future, and certainly that the leaders of the concept should not be appointed to important positions such as research sergeant.
