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Israel’s Channel 12 aired on Friday leaked audio recordings of Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva, the former head of Israeli military intelligence (Aman), where he was seen saying that 50 Palestinians must die for every person killed in the Oct. 7 attack.
In the recordings, he admitted failures of both the political and security establishments during that day.
“The fact that there are 50,000 dead in Gaza is 'necessary' and 'essential' for future generations. Before the war, I said that for every person killed on Oct. 7, 50 Palestinians must die,” Haliva declared.
“It does not matter if they are children,” he added.
“This is not about revenge; it is about sending a message to future generations. From time to time, they need a Nakba to understand the cost,” the former Israeli official maintained.
The Nakba, meaning “catastrophe” in Arabic, refers to the mass displacement of over 700,000 Palestinians from their homes and lands following the creation of Israel in 1948.
Haliva’s remarks sparked widespread controversy, as they were an unusually direct call for the collective punishment of civilians.
In insisting that “it does not matter if they are children,” he endorsed a practice prohibited under international law.
According to international law experts, such remarks amount to a call for numerical retribution and collective punishment, constituting a flagrant violation of two fundamental principles of international humanitarian law and breaches of the Geneva Conventions.
Abdullah al-Ansi, a humanitarian relief activist, told Türkiye Today that the statements disregard key humanitarian principles
"The obligation to distinguish between civilians and combatants and the requirement that civilian losses not be excessive compared to the expected military advantage," he maintained, adding that neither principle has been observed since the start of Israel’s assault on Gaza.
He added that the breaches include “advocating collective punishment by killing Palestinians based on nationality, prohibited under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention, and incitement to war crimes and genocide, which contravenes the 1948 Genocide Convention—to which Israel is a signatory.”
Legal scholars argue that the ongoing war in Gaza meets the threshold of “a full-fledged genocide”—combining explicit intent, as reflected in leaders’ statements like Haliva’s, that advocate mass civilian targeting, starvation policies, and obstruction of aid, fuel and power supplies.
Haliva’s comments are not isolated. Many in Israel’s leadership and media have used genocidal rhetoric against Palestinians since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant previously called Palestinians “human animals,” a statement Human Rights Watch condemned as “a call to commit war crimes.”
Far-right Women’s Affairs Minister May Golan said she was “proud of Gaza’s destruction,” adding that even decades from now, Palestinian children would recount to their grandchildren what Jews did to their families.
Meanwhile, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared in Paris that “there is no such thing as a Palestinian people” and called for confronting Palestinians with even greater force.
International law experts warn that these repeated statements reflect not just individual positions but a systematic pattern of incitement to hatred and mass violence—laying the groundwork for potential international accountability for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide.
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