"it may be kosher, but it stinks" is a known israeli saying. it is pretty self-explanatory. what dan halutz did may be legal, but it fails the smell test.

so what did he do? on july 12th several hours after the israeli soldiers were kidnapped, and as the large scale military operation was about to begin, halutz found the time to call his broker and tell him to sell-off his portfolio (was not worth much, about $30K).

what is troubling about this is not that he found the time to make the call (it is a very short call, saying "sell"), or that he is not a very sophisticated investor (it would have been much better to short the market), what is troubling is that as israel was dealing with an escalating crisis his small portfolio made it to the list of priorities of things he should take care of.

i won't go into the speculation of what does it means with regard to his belief in the army, the length of the campaign, etc… to me it is an indication that the guy is immoral and incompetent.