In leaked audio, the former head of Israeli military intelligence can be heard saying the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza are “necessary and required for future generations”.

“For everything that happened on October 7, for every one person on October 7, 50 Palestinians must die,” said Israel Defence Force’s (IDF) Major General Aharon Haliva in the recordings released by Israel’s Channel 12 news on Friday.

“It doesn’t matter now if they are children.”

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“The fact that there are already 50,000 dead in Gaza is necessary and required for future generations,” Haliva said in the recordings.

It’s unclear when he was speaking, but the number killed in Gaza surpassed 50,000 in March.

“There is no choice — every now and then, they need a Nakba in order to feel the price,” Haliva said.

The Nakba, or “catastrophe” in Arabic, is a seminal event in Palestinian history when roughly 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes by armed Jewish groups in 1948 during the establishment of the State of Israel.

Haliva was head of Israeli military intelligence on October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched attacks on southern Israel in which 1200 people were killed and 250 more kidnapped. He resigned his position in April 2024 over his “leadership responsibility”, becoming the first senior IDF officer to do so.

The lengthy recordings appear to be from long conversations with Haliva, but Channel 12 does not identify the person with whom the retired officer is speaking. Haliva’s central claim throughout the recordings is that the Israeli military is not the only organisation responsible for the failures that led to the October 7 attacks.

He places blame on Israel’s political leadership and Shin Bet, the internal security service, for believing Hamas would not carry out an assault.

In a statement to Israel’s Channel 12, Haliva said the recordings were said in a “closed forum, and I can only regret that”.

He called the recordings “fragments of partial things, which cannot reflect the full picture — certainly when it comes to complex, detailed issues, most of which are highly classified”.

Israel is facing mounting criticism over the war in Gaza and its new plans to occupy Gaza City. Last week, New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christoper Luxon said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had “lost the plot” and the takeover of Gaza City would be “utterly, utterly unacceptable”.

On Friday, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said in an interview with the Jyllands-Posten newspaper that “Netanyahu is now a problem in himself.”

In a statement, Hamas condemned Haliva’s remarks and said the audio recording “confirms that crimes against our people are high-level decisions and official policy from the enemy’s political and security leadership”.

A United Nations Special Committee report released last November found Israel’s conduct in Gaza “is consistent with the characteristics of genocide”. Last month, two Israeli human rights groups also accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. The Israeli military said the conclusion was “entirely unfounded”.

Israel has repeatedly denied accusations of genocide, saying it is acting in accordance with international law.