Shelly Meshel-Yogev, whose daughter Libby Cohen Meguri was murdered by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023, confronted former IDF Intelligence Directorate chief Aharon Haliva during a chance encounter at a park on Friday, accusing him of failing to personally take responsibility for her daughter's death.
Cohen Meguri was murdered while attempting to escape the Supernova music festival. During the encounter, Meshel-Yogev told Haliva that despite living nearby and knowing her daughter's father, he had never visited or contacted the family.
“You live a kilometer from our house, and you never came. You know her father, and you didn’t come. Don’t lie," Meshel-Yogev said in a video of the encounter posted to her Instagram account.
“Where are you? Where were you? My daughter was buried because of you! You should feel humiliated and carry responsibility, and not breathe and say, ‘I want to come to you, I want to cry with you, because I am also suffering.’ You should say you are suffering like me! You don’t understand this?" she told Haliva.
“You didn’t bother to talk to us once - unlike [former IDF Chief of Staff] Herzi Halevi, who called and said I want to come. Where are you? Where have you been?"
Haliva is shown listening to Meshel-Yogev throughout the confrontation but does not respond.
Haliva resigned as head of IDF Intelligence in April 2024, more than six months after the October 7 massacre. At the time, he said he was accepting responsibility for his role in the failures that preceded the attack.
"The Intelligence Department under my command did not fulfill the mission we were entrusted with. I carry that dark day with me since then, day by day, night by night. I will forever carry with me the tremendous pain of the war," he wrote. His resignation took effect in August 2024.
More than a year later, in August 2025, Channel 12 News published recordings in which Haliva spoke at length for the first time about the October 7 massacre.
In the recordings, Haliva acknowledged what he described as both a personal and systemic failure and attributed responsibility to military and political leadership.
"I took responsibility. They won’t forgive me for October 7th - I failed," he said.
He characterized the failure as a broader cultural breakdown rather than an isolated incident. "It’s not arrogance, it’s a whole culture. We got used to thinking we knew everything - IDF Intelligence, Shin Bet, Mossad - and the enemy was deterred. This wasn’t an accident that you just change four tires and move on. It requires deconstruction and rebuilding."
Haliva also criticized former Chief of Staff Halevi, saying, “Herzi was not negligent - he was paranoid. He didn’t wake me up at night, but even if he did, I would have gone back to sleep. That was the mindset we all had." He also described Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as an “attentive, situation-reading man - but a coward. He failed the test of results."
Addressing his own role as the head of IDF Intelligence, Haliva said: "I’m accountable for the investigations at IDF Intelligence, to dozens of officers, in bright sunlight. Nothing was hidden. This happened on my watch. I despise anyone who says, ‘That wouldn’t have happened to me.’ I was the CEO of a monster - and I’m responsible. Period."
(Arutz Sheva-Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)