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Chief of Staff Halutz in his trademark sunglasses: "Shady dealings?" (AP file)
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| By israelinsider staff and partners August 15, 2006 |
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Senior sources in the Israel Defense Forces General Staff and field officers who took part in the war in Lebanon told Haaretz Tuesday that Chief of Staff Dan Halutz cannot escape resignation due to the ethical unseemliness of his decision to sell his stock portfolio while soldiers were killed in Lebanon and others were attempting to rescue wounded. Halutz should resign the moment the military completes its pullout from south Lebanon, they said. Halutz does not now intend to resign of his own accord.
Lt.-Gen. Halutz sold market shares worth NIS 120,000 (about $28,000) on July 12, the day Hezbollah kidnapped two soldiers in a cross-border attack. As political and military leaders were meeting in crisis session, Maariv reported, Halutz was busy liquidating his stocks.
Sources close to Halutz confirmed the reports. "The chief of staff manages his family's financial affairs in a routine manner like any Israeli citizen," an official statement read.
"The chief of staff is working day and night to defend the citizens of Israel and digging into his personal affairs is not appropriate," read the statement.
Halutz described the Ma'ariv article exposing the affair as "malicious and tendentious. I don't intend to be dragged down to such a low level and blemish my integrity. I am a citizen too and have my own economic affairs. This has stained [my reputation] for no reason and is unworthy of any further comment."
However, ynet reported that Israeli officers were amazed by the reports Tuesday morning, with some saying the news was an embarrassment. "The chief of staff is not a private man and everything he does, even away from the public eye, has an impact on the whole country. I don't want to judge but the atmosphere is really not good," an officer said.
Even more stunning is Halutz's personal statement that he didn't even anticipate the possibility of war. "I had lost NIS 25,000 on my investment portfolio and began to sell assets gradually. It's true that I sold off the entire portfolio, which was worth NIS 120,000, on 12 July around 12:00 noon, but you can't link between this and the war. There is no connection. At that moment I didn't think and didn't expect there would be war. During the war itself I did a lot of things that were related to my personal and family life."
Leaving aside the contradiction between the gradual sell-off and the sale of the entire portfolio, there is a breathtaking denial of an expectation that there would be war, and his attempt to blur the difference between what he did just before the war and things he did after.
Halutz was evidently more prescient in his financial decisions than he was in his military ones.
The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange fell 8% in a wave of selling on the first three days of fighting. But before the sell-off, thanks to his informed decision to sell his portfolio, the Chief of Staff was liquid. Other investors were not so "lucky."
There was evidently nothing illegal in Halutz's actions on July 12, since "insider trading" laws do not apply to leveraging knowledge of state or military secrets for private financial gain.
However, the ethical impropriety may cost Halutz his career. National Union-National Religious Party MK Zevulun Orlev called on Attorney General Menachem Mazuz to open an investigation into the affair.
MK Collette Avital of Labor, Likud MK Gilad Erdan and MK Aryeh Eldad of the National Union led calls for Halutz to resign in the wake of the disclosures.
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