Brig. Gen. Amir Avivi to TML: Gaza Hospital Airstrike ‘One Big Lie’

Islamic Jihad admitted to shooting the rocket, it didn’t hit the hospital, and it may have killed far fewer than claimed. Avivi sheds light on Israel's imminent ground invasion and the role of misinformation in the conflict.

Brig. Gen. (ret.) Amir Avivi, born in Jerusalem, climbed the ranks of the Israel Defense Forces to become a general and head of the Auditing and Consulting Department of the Israeli Defense Establishment.

Throughout his military career, he held numerous senior roles including director of the Office of the Chief of Staff and deputy commander of the Gaza Division. He led a battalion of 800 soldiers in Gaza during Operation Defensive Shield, served as assistant to the IDF chief of staff, and was commander of Brigade 512 and the School of Military Engineering.

After his military career, Avivi founded a startup company and established IDSF Habithonistim, a movement focused on national security issues in Israel, where he serves as founder and chairman.

The Media Line’s Felice Friedson spoke to Avivi about the Israeli military’s imminent ground operation into Gaza, the explosion in Gaza City at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, and the failure of Israel’s intelligence agencies to foresee and thwart the October 7 invasion of 3,000 terrorists into communities near the Gaza border.

The Media Line: Brig. Gen. Amir Avivi, thank you so much for taking time at this very difficult time.

Avivi: Thank you.

TML: All eyes are on the rockets which exploded and killed 500 people in Gaza. What can you share, because there are many narratives that are floating?

Avivi: There is only one truth, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad admitted shooting the hospital. They didn’t really hit the hospital. They hit the parking lot. I don’t know how many died, but it’s maybe a dozen, maybe more, but not 500 and not Israel [who was responsible]. So, basically, it’s one big lie.

We have all the proof, 100% that it’s them. They admitted talking between each other. We heard the terrorists speak and we also presented it. We have from different angles the cameras showing that there was shooting, and then they had a failure and it fell where it fell. Till now, I think more than 135 rockets they shot and they fell inside Gaza and it’s not the first time it’s happened. It happens every time. They are producing it not in very sophisticated factories, and this is the kind of rockets they have.

TML: It’s very difficult to show this to the international community sometimes as this happens, and you see that there is a barrage of misinformation that often comes out, so how does the IDF deal with that?

Avivi: Well, I would have expected from the international media to wait and get an answer, because the IDF will always say the truth. But in order to say the truth, we need to double-check and see what happened.

So, really, from the very beginning, we knew it’s 99.9% not the IDF, but for us 99.9[%] is not enough. We want to give a serious answer backed up by facts, so it took the IDF three hours to really check it thoroughly and be able to say definitely it’s not us, and also to prove it’s them.

Unfortunately, in some major newspapers, immediately they said it’s the IDF, and this is really really bad. It’s terrible behavior. What can we say? This is the reality.

TML: Almost two weeks into this war, the world is looking at one point; when are the ground troops going in and what is the holdup?

Avivi: Well, it’s not a holdup. We have to prepare our forces. We have a lot of air force missions before we send our troops inside. We want to send them where they’ll be the safest as possible. Rest assured, Israel is going to gain control of the Gaza Strip. Israel is going to destroy Hamas entirely.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad, it’s going to clean all of [the] terror infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. That might take months. A long time. But we’ll reach a point that Gaza is clean of terror infrastructure.

TML: There are media reports of extremely detailed intelligence by Hamas. Can you tell us where the indication might be that everything that happened started with Iran?

Avivi: Hamas is funded by Iran. Seventy percent of their money is Iranian. They are equipped by Iran. They are guided by Iran. Everything is Iran. The whole story is about Iran wanting to disrupt the buildup of a coalition—and American/Israeli/Sunni coalition—who are moving fast towards a peace agreement with Saudi Arabia and basically normalizing relations with the whole Sunni world including Indonesia, Malaysia, Oman, [and] Pakistan.

And this is a process that the Axis of Iran/Russia/China, so it’s a danger, especially as the Iranians perceived it as a big danger to their national security. And they decided to disrupt this, disrupt it by launching this unbelievably devastating, evil attack while keeping Hizbullah intact in order to be able to defend themselves.

And I don’t think they thought that this will end up with Israel destroying Hamas eventually, and the US understanding that this is a global issue. And the advance of American military warships poses an incredible threat to Iran and Hizbullah, so things are evolving [but] not in the way the Iranians thought [they would].

TML: The tunnels. I mean, we have spoken to people on the border saying those still existed, and I thought the IDF had made statements that they had gotten to all of them. Where does that stand in terms of the soldiers going in? How dangerous is this? And let’s not just talk about the south, but also [Israel’s] northern border.

Avivi: The IDF dealt with the tunnels that were crossing our border, and this we managed to really eliminate and there was no crossing from tunnels. Everything we experienced was above ground, not underground. Having said that, the whole Gaza Strip is one big underground infrastructure everywhere inside Gaza. This is not something that we’ve dealt with.

There are thousands and thousands of terrorists in the tunnels. They are waiting for the IDF. We have trained for that. We have techniques. We have technology, and we’ll deal with that when we go in.

TML: What kind of backup, if any, on the ground do you expect the United States to give?

Avivi: I don’t expect any backup on the ground. Talking about Gaza, I don’t expect any backup at all, which is militarily. I think that the US will intervene if Iran and Hizbullah intervene. Then it’s a global war. Then it’s a regional war.

Then it’s not only about Israel. This is endangering really the US, and the US made it clear. I think that President Biden said it clearly, “Don’t! Don’t do that!” really saying that the US would be willing to intervene in several ways.

TML: I realize that it’s really not the time for the investigation mode, but what happened that day on October 7 that the Israeli Defense Forces were not ready? That there were not nearly enough people on the ground that ended up in a massive slaughter of Israeli citizens?

Avivi: We got used to being very dependent on intelligence, taking risks, relying on the fact that we have intelligence on time to bring [in] more forces, and [here] we didn’t have this intelligence. I have seen that problem a few months ago already not only in Gaza, but also in Judea and Samaria and the West Bank.

I think we are lacking human intelligence. We have a lot of technology, and everybody wants to deal with cyber, AI, [Unit] 8200, but we are human beings. And with human beings, you need human intelligence. We didn’t have the proper intelligence. We will have to really go in depth of this issue and change it.

TML: The different factions had huge amounts of intelligence, and the pamphlets that have come out show this. Do you feel that some of the Gazans that were working might have helped to assist this plan?

Avivi: Yeah, I was opposed completely in letting Gazans into Israel to work, because Hamas in the last 20 years has completely radicalized their society. I mean, think about it. They educate children from the age of 3 [to a life of terrorism]. There is only one outcome. It is to become jihadists and extremists, and this is the kind of indoctrination that the young generation in Gaza is suffering from. It was a very bad idea, it enabled them to get a lot of intelligence, and it is also something we will have to deal with in the future.

TML: How do you deal with two million people plus who are living in Gaza, and many will say that many are just people who want to live and breathe?

Avivi: So, I think that the first question we need to ask is, what is needed for Israel to be secure? We are never ever [again] going to let anyone on the other side have terror capabilities. For doing that, we need two things after we clean up the Gaza Strip. One, sit on the Egyptian border because there is endless amounts of weapons that are going in from Egypt. And the other thing is full freedom of operation for the IDF everywhere, just as we have Judea and Samaria and the West Bank.

And then we can talk about exactly civil-wise who will manage the towns and the cities. We have to remember that also the Palestinian Authority is corrupt, funds terrorism, [and] is hated by their own society so we need to think outside of the box.

I can tell you that we in IDSF have built four different plans for a vision for the future. None of them look like the plans that exist today. You know, we are in a world that speaks about innovation. Well, you innovation [and] not only in technology [but] also in statecraft.

TML: Does it include Arab nations that might come in and take control as well of this entity, of this land?

Avivi: Well, I don’t know of an Arab nation, but there are many ideas that I’d be happy to discuss. You know, it’s a whole discussion. Going into it can take hours.

TML: Well, I’m going to take you up on that! Brig. Gen. Amir Avivi, thank you very much for joining me at The Media Line.

Avivi: Thank you very much!