Netanyahu Is a Clear and Present Danger to Israel. Now Its Defense Chiefs Face a Dire Dilemma
Thirteen months after deadly attack by Hamas, which saw that Israel was in an unprecedented position of internal weakness because of the government's attempted regime coup, Netanyahu is once again posing a direct threat to democracy – and firing Gallant will not be his final move
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took a gamble by firing Defense Minister Yoav Gallant Tuesday night. He believes he can push this through under cover of the war.
Evidently, he believes Israelis are so tired, burnt out and worried by the ever-present security threats to their lives that they won't take to the streets en masse and force him to retract the dismissal, as happened in March 2023. The coming days will once again show whether he has made a political mistake.
Tuesday was a difficult night, the gloomiest since the massacre on October 7, 2023. Thirteen months ago, Hamas gambled on a murderous surprise attack on southern Israel, in part because it saw that Israel was unprecedentedly weak internally since society had been was torn in two over Netanyahu's attempted judicial overhaul.
Now, when the war is still far from being won – despite the impressive achievements of the derided security services in recent months – Netanyahu has renewed his direct threat to democracy. And Gallant's dismissal isn't the last move he has planned.
The decision to oust Gallant at the height of the war raises questions about Netanyahu's fitness to continue serving. It has certainly sharpened the understanding that his personal and political survival is his top priority.
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Once again, a clear and present danger to national security has been created. We need only recall what is happening around us – combat on several fronts, the imminent threat of another Iranian missile and drone attack, a complete freeze on negotiations over a deal to free the hostages (whose fate interests Netanyahu not at all) and military steps aimed at annexing the northern Gaza Strip without even a smidgen of public transparency.
Gallant was the contact person with the Biden administration. It coordinated all military moves with him and the system under him, due to the great tension in Netanyahu's relationships with the Americans.
Political pundits attributed Netanyahu's decision to an ongoing crisis of trust with Gallant that included disagreements over the direction of the war, as well as a major crisis over approving some arrangement to continue ultra-Orthodox draft-dodging. The ultra-Orthodox parties put heavy pressure on Netanyahu this week to keep his word and take steps to give their voters a sweeping exemption from military service at a time when the army needs thousands of additional fighters and reservists are collapsing under the burden of hundreds of days of reserve duty per year.
But it's reasonable to suspect that things won't end here. It's clear that a noose of investigations is once again tightening around the Prime Minister's Office.
Prime Minister Netanyahu on Thursday.Credit: Amir Cohen/ REUTERS
Last week, the case of Eli Feldstein erupted. Feldstein, who is Netanyahu's military spokesman, was arrested by the Shin Bet security service on suspicion of running a network of intelligence personnel who stole top secret information from Military Intelligence, crudely manipulated the material and then sent it to the foreign media for publication, all to remove the pressure on Netanyahu from the hostages' families. These suspicions may well spread to other Netanyahu confidants with regard to the use of other material.
At the same time, the media was permitted to reveal on Tuesday that the police have been conducting a new investigation into something that happened "at the start of the war." The reference is apparently regarding reports that Netanyahu's previous military secretary, Maj. Gen. Avi Gil, filed a complaint about suspected falsification of protocols from sensitive meetings in Netanyahu's office.
On Monday, seemingly due to the crisis with the ultra-Orthodox – but in practice, apparently due to the investigations – Netanyahu complained that Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara was "contrarian." The direction is clear, and it was already been said by people around him Tuesday night: the prime minister wants to conduct a major purge, on various pretexts, by firing all the remaining gatekeepers – Baharav-Miara, Shin Bet director Ronen Bar (whose subordinates, by chance, are running the investigation into Feldstein) and Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi.
Defense Minister Israel Katz, whom Netanyahu has appointed as Gallant's replacement, is supposed to help him oust Halevi. Bizarrely, though as usual since October 7, 2023, Netanyahu is seeking to replace all the people responsible for the disaster except the most senior and most important of all – himself.
The heads of the security services will now have to decide what to do. Will they restrain themselves over Gallant's ouster? Will they restrain themselves over the ousters that will almost certainly follow it? Yet on the other hand, can they abandon the leaky ship in the middle of a war, when civilians' lives are in danger and soldiers are fighting in Gaza and Lebanon?
Israelis demonstrate after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sacked his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, citing lack of trust, in Tel Aviv, on Tuesday.Credit: REUTERS
The angry Israelis who did take to the streets Tuesday night were confronted by a police force headed by someone utterly unfit for his post and who was only recently appointed by an utterly unfit minister. This may soon be the picture at the other security services as well.
Netanyahu outdid himself Tuesday night in his praise of Katz, whom he termed a bulldozer. There were years when these two men spoke very differently about each other. Though Katz is a longtime member of the security cabinet, he lacks any experience in the relevant fields. He is a featherweight appointee whose sole purpose is to serve Netanyahu like an obedient puppet.
Gallant is a coarse, difficult man who in the past has also had slipups with regard to the rule of law (first and foremost, the fact that he stood alongside Netanyahu for that embarrassing picture at the start of the latter's trial). But throughout the judicial overhaul and the war, he has been the voice of responsibility, sanity and conscience and has given the army extremely important backing in the face of venomous attacks.
Katz, who is remembered mainly for a series of idiotic tweets since becoming foreign minister, isn't fit to fill such important shoes at such a difficult time.
Through this latest move, Netanyahu has apparently stabilized his governing coalition. At the same time, he is subjecting Israeli society to a shock that is completely unreasonable during wartime and thereby endangering national security.
This is a government that is simultaneously engaged in thwarting the conscription of the ultra-Orthodox, thwarting a hostage deal and thwarting the establishment of a commission of inquiry into the failures that led to the Hamas massacre. And the man who heads it is determined to evade responsibility for the biggest disaster in the country's history. In his view, any means to this end is kosher – and especially the continued destruction of our democracy.