Col. Nimrod Aloni (left) with Col. Yoav Yarom. Yarom replaced Aloni as the commander of the IDF's Samaria Regional Brigade. Photo: IDF.

Col. Nimrod Aloni of the Israel Defense Forces was replaced as the commander of the Samaria Regional Brigade on Thursday, and in his outgoing speech, he said his own failures partly led to the massacre of 4 members of the Fogel family, including a 4 year old girl and a 3 month old baby.

“I failed at Itamar,” Aloni said, “and in my failure, the members of the Fogel family were murdered cruelly. There are no words to describe the sadness and frustration I felt on that Friday night.”

In February of 2011, two Palestinian teenagers broke into the home of Ehud and Ruti Fogel in the West Bank , stabbing the two of them to death, along with three of their children, ages 11, 4, and 3 months old.

Aloni, who is a veteran of the IDF, and had his foot blown off during an operation in Lebanon, said that after the Fogel murders, his unit changed the way they operate.

“We initiated an operation that had no precedent after such a terror attack. We decided to leave no stone unturned in the village of Awarta [where the murders occurred]. I saw in the soldiers’ eyes that they do not require motivational speeches,” he said.