Brig. Gen. (res.) Oren Solomon, former head of the IDF's war investigation team, spoke Wednesday morning with Reshet Bet radio about the events he says began when Military Police soldiers raided his home.
According to Solomon, the raid was allegedly conducted under orders from the Military Advocate General, as part of what Solomon believes was an effort to tarnish his reputation.
“One morning, there’s a knock at my door, Military Police soldiers take over my home, conduct a search, some of my children are present, and then a saga begins where I am interrogated, and all media devices in the house are confiscated,” Solomon recalled.
“I asked what the suspicions against me were. They claimed I had connected an external hard drive to a computer I was working on. I laughed. I have not, and would never, do such things. That computer is in the operations room, dozens of officers use it.”
According to Solomon, the investigation was launched under the directive of IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, carried out by the Head of Information Security — a figure he described as part of “the officer neutralization apparatus.”
“This is because I led the criticism about the cover-up by the former Chief of Staff regarding the military investigations into the events of the morning of October 7[, 2023],” he stressed.
“This is the same head of information security who took equipment from Rafael Hayoun before the war,” Solomon added. “A lot of questions need to be asked about him. The very claim that he made - to open this investigation - is phishing.”
Solomon leveled pointed criticism at the former Chief of Staff. “Even before the official probes began, I was leading professional criticism of Halevi’s conduct during the war. Throughout the investigation process, I criticized how the inquiries were handled, their contamination, [and] their concealment. In March, I told him so directly, face to face, and handed him a document. Immediately after, he contacted the department head who launched the investigation against me.”
Solomon also stressed that the investigation he led was the only one that addressed core questions, chief among them: “What did the Chief of Staff do on October 7th, during the first six hours of the attack?” His answer: “Inaction, paralysis, confusion, and in essence what I found was a lack of professionalism.”
When asked whether any branch of the IDF had properly investigated itself, Solomon responded: “The IDF’s debriefs on communities and combat zones — those that focused on tactical layers — allowed for effective cross-referencing of information. Except for five of them, which require further scrutiny, dozens of the investigations were conducted thoroughly.”