Over the past decade, all the adjectives and expressions used to capture the distrust and monstrous behavior of Benjamin Netanyahu – "unbelievable," "unfathomable" and the like – have worn thin. What more can be said about a prime minister who, in the middle of a terrible war in which hundreds of Israelis have been killed and thousands more wounded, fires his defense minister as a prelude to passing a law that will allow tens of thousands of young ultra-Orthodox men to dodge the draft? Is that "unfathomable," "shocking"?
Yoav Gallant's dismissal reflects Netanyahu's imperial mentality as the current government marks the halfway point. He has reached the epitome of cynicism and contempt for a majority of Israelis, including many Likud voters. He is indifferent to the deaths, the suffering, the physical and mental torture of the hostages and their families, to bereavement (apart from his own, which he has been milking for 50 years) and to the hardships of reservists who have put in 250 or 300 days of combat service over the past year.
Einav and Natalie Zangauker at a protest in Jerusalem this week against the firing of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.Credit: Naama Grynbaum
No action too rotten for him to take for the sake of his governing coalition, in the knowledge that he will lose the next election. The deal he reached with Gideon Sa'ar to pass the draft dodgers' bill, replete with jobs for Sa'ar and his partners, stinks like the decaying corpse of a feral cat in the backyard. The spoils were handed out generously, the payback will be accordingly generous. True, an overwhelming majority of the public is convinced that the move was wrong and irrelevant. So what? The election is in two years.
- And what in all tarnation is "minister of administrations"? There already is a Negev and Galilee Development Ministry, with an active minister, Yitzhak Wasserlauf. Why create redundancy and turf wars? On the other hand, it's an improvement over the original plan to turn Zeev Elkin into a national joke with the title of "minister of water and higher education." Monty Python had a sketch about the Ministry of Silly Walks. Elkin could have established a Ministry of Bizarre Names. He has the experience.
Israel Katz and Gideon Sa'ar, the new defense and foreign ministers respectively, in the Knesset this week.Credit: Noam Moskowitz/Knesset
Netanyahu is actually a sane man who engages in crazy and disgusting acts. When a madman acts like that, it's understandable. He can't do otherwise. It's bigger than him. But when the actions are done calmly, with deliberate intent and without batting an eye, no court would find him innocent. Including the court of public opinion.
Gallant was fired because he is the negative of the man who fired him, a man of principle, someone honest, courageous, statesmanlike and moral. He doesn't hesitate to express his opinion behind closed doors and in front of them. Netanyahu can't stand people like that. The opinion polls were driving him (and "my wife") crazy. The public consistently expressed trust in the defense minister and relied on him. About Netanyahu, it was the reverse.
Contrary to the prime minister's claims, there was no "trust" problem. Gallant didn't violate any cabinet resolution. The army did not occupy areas or withdraw from them in defiance of the security cabinet. It did not refrain from carrying out actions the security cabinet ordered it to carry out. The army is subordinate to the security cabinet and acted accordingly.
Gallant at a press conference Tuesday after he was dropped as defense minister.Credit: Tomer Applebaum
Democracies die in darkness, as The Washington Post says. But they can also die in the full light of day when a dictator in the making announces that he is removing the only minister who opposed the draft-evasion bill and spoke of the urgency of bringing the hostages home.
No one should be surprised if one evening a similar tack is used against Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara. The groundwork has been laid. The evidence against her – dozens of cases in which she insisted that ministries uphold the law – has begun circulating in public.
Wednesday night, Gallant held his farewell meeting – his second in a year and a half – with the General Staff forum, where he is held in high esteem. even affection. "Maintain your moral compass," he told the generals, "the Israel Defense Forces' commitment is to the country and the law." In the not-too-distant past, no defense minister would have felt compelled to say such a thing. But nowadays, they have no choice.
"Moral compass" is an obscenity in the government in which Gallant served. So is a sense of obligation to the country and the law. Gallant's words weren't said for nothing, they address the basic anxieties the General Staff Forum feels about the government it is subordinate to.
Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara at the Supreme Court last month.Credit: Oren Ben Hakoon
The generals each spoke in turn. Some of them, according to someone who was there, were emotional, others devastated. The fears reflected in their remarks were greater than the ones they felt during Gallant's first farewell meeting at the end of March 2023. One read the Natan Alterman poem "A Response to an Italian Captain:" "The wind lashed the seas, and the sea lashed the ship. Yet the task was completed. We drink to you, Captain, and lift our glass high; we'll meet again on these waters."
You can take Gallant out of the boat, but you can't take the boat out of Gallant.
A one-man operation
Israel Katz was appointed in order not to be Gallant. That's his assignment. He is not among the worst ministers in the cabinet, but he is definitely a dishonorable member in the club of sheep and cowards. In the distant past, a few times he acted courageously against Netanyahu. It will take a very long time until Katz has familiarized himself with the complexities of the defense establishment and gets up to speed on the various fronts. Until then, Katz will be a "deputy defense minister," a Defense Ministry official told me. In any case, Netanyahu's goal is to be the uber-defense minister.
Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi, who worked closely and cooperatively with Gallant, will be treated as a permanent suspect. The prime minister is dying to be rid of him (and no less, IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, whose every appearance and word of empathy for the hostages is taken by the royal family as subversive). "Our Israel" will need to supply the goods by pushing Halevi out. When he was finance minister, Katz did this to Keren Terner Eyal, whom he had been close to for years, when he fired her as treasury director general for refusing to submit to his whims and predations.
Katz in the Knesset on Thursday.Credit: Olivier Fitoussi
Gallant's gut-wrenching statement in his retirement speech was: "The hostages can be brought home." This is not the heartbreaking cry of a family member. This is a fact. He remains physically pained by the missed opportunity for a deal in July – not really a missed opportunity but an evil act by the man for whom the lives of the hostages held captive in Gaza's tunnels are a small price to pay for his political survival.
In his final visit Wednesday night to the headquarters of the Mossad and the Shin Bet security service, Gallant and the two agencies' heads talked mainly about the hostages. Gallant is convinced that the army and the wider defense establishment have done everything they can to give the political leaders the tools to reach a deal. But the politicians have a different agenda. Gallant repeated Thursday that a deal is feasible thanks to the IDF's achievements. Agree to a long-term cease-fire, be flexible on the issue of releasing the Palestinian prisoners and stop treating the Philadelphi corridor as a second Western Wall.
Gallant's political future remains unclear. Starting on Monday, he will find himself among Likud's backbenchers and surrounded by a group of hypocrites who are gloating at his downfall – the stupid Amichai Chikli and the malicious Shlomo Karhi are at the head. On the other hand, we must positively mention Yuli Edelstein and Dan Illouz, whose moral opposition to the draft-evasion bill has led to punitive measures against them.
A close associate of the defense minister told me that as a naval commando Gallant conducted a one-man operation and survived. Today he's going to do it again, albeit not under life-and-death conditions. In the meantime, he says that his way is "the Likud way." Not Likud in the spirit of Itamar Ben-Gvir but the one of Menachem Begin. From that it's safe to conclude that Gallant will try to form a political framework that stands for what Likud once was (an idea that stood behind the establishment of Gideon Sa'ar's New Hope party).
Itamar Ben-Gvir in the Knesset on Thursday.Credit: Olivier Fitoussi
As long as there is no election, there really isn't much for Gallant to do. But when the coalition's end appears on the horizon, we will hear more from him alone or in an alliance. Naftali Bennett is an interesting option. His calculated silence is usually broken in interviews with the foreign media, or in social media posts.
Immediately after the dismissal, Bennett called the country's leadership "crazy and sick," and promised that "change is on the way." The road, as we know, is long and winding, but as far as I can recall, this was his clearest public statement yet to signal his return to the top.
Minutes men
The timing of Gallant's dismissal wasn't designed to influence the progress of two investigations whose flames are lapping at the Prime Minister's Office. But the sacking's proximity to the probes adds to the acrid smell.
And when the details are revealed, especially of the affair of the falsifying
of minutes of national security deliberations, it will be clear how much the word "criminal" understates what happened.
In July, Nadav Eyal of the daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported about a secret letter of complaint that Maj. Gen. Avi Gil, at the time Netanyahu's military secretary, sent to the attorney general. Gil alleged that officials at the Prime Minister's Office had tried to alter transcripts of security cabinet meetings.
Benjamin Netanyahu visiting the officers' training base last month.Credit: Ilan Assayag
The orders had been handed down by a very senior official at the office. Gil's allegations were based on what he saw for himself and accounts he heard from others.
Before he stepped down in May, Gil served as military secretary under three prime ministers – Bennett, Yair Lapid and Netanyahu. All the alleged breaches that Gil reported occurred under Bibi, and he recorded them in painstaking shorthand in a little black notebook that became his trademark.
In more than one conversation with associates after leaving the Prime Minister's Office, Gil said that a senior official's actions relating to documentation of the war might trigger a criminal investigation. In the not-too-distant future we'll know if he was right.
The other affair involves PMO spokesman Eli Feldstein's alleged leaking of Military Intelligence documents to German tabloid Bild, which is friendly to the prime minister. The two affairs aren't linked, save for Netanyahu's obsession with what's politely called "controlling the narrative," something that in 2019 got the prime minister a corruption trial.
As long as this obsession doesn't endanger the lives of intelligence sources or undermine the hostage negotiations, we can live with it. The documents in question did both.
It's worth devoting a moment to the alleged leaker and his ascent all the way to the inner sanctum: the "aquarium" at the Prime Minister's Office.
Feldstein served as an IDF spokesman first as a soldier and later as an officer. Two reserve officers who knew him during that period told me about his tendency to push the envelope and sometimes smash right through. He was a "loose cannon," one of them said. "I knew it wouldn't end well."
Attorney Oded Savoray, who is representing spokesman Eli Feldstein in the BibiLeaks case, at the Rishon Letzion Magistrate's Court this week.Credit: Hadas Parush
Shortly after the Prime Minister's Office took him on, the Gaza war broke out. Feldstein failed a security check conducted by the Shin Bet, which tends to go easy when investigating job candidates at the PMO. Only in extreme cases are they ruled out, and Feldstein turned out to be one of them. So an attempt was made to bring him on board through the office of Yossi Shelley, the director general of the Prime Minister's Office.
That in itself is a scandal: The director general's office is only a few meters away. But this is routine in this group where one murky business gets piled on another.
Tzachi Braverman, the chief of staff of the Prime Minister's Office, wasn't bothered by all this. Feldstein came and went into the aquarium, perused classified documents, joined the prime minister on visits to military units and briefed military reporters. Braverman claims that responsibility for Feldstein's employment lies with Shelley. No doubt we'll hear more about this conflict.
In any case, a person who was denied a security clearance and then reads confidential documents and briefs journalists during a war looks like a cast member in the classic British TV series "Yes, Minister."
Despite the Netanyahu camp's cries of "selective enforcement" and "witch hunt," the Prime Minister's Office is known as leak central. As early as October 8, 2023, the office came to its senses and began its sacred work of exonerating the prime minister. Along the way, a veteran stenographer was fired and replaced by Netanyahu's secretary, somebody who wouldn't create problems.
Tzachi Braverman, the chief of staff of the Prime Minister's Office, at the Knesset in September.Credit: Oren Ben Hakoon
On the 11th, during the deliberations on whether to launch a preemptive strike on Hezbollah in Lebanon, no recording was made. A few days later, in separate discussions, the defense minister's chief of staff and the assistant to the IDF chief of staff were prevented (by Braverman, of course) from bringing recording devices into the room. The prime minister claimed that the officials would be recorded "for an investigative committee," which certainly wasn't the case.
Transcripts are usually distributed in writing four days after the event, but the army couldn't wait. Gallant and Halevi urgently needed the minutes, so they asked to record meetings independently.
One suspect in the investigation into the theft of the classified documents said he believed that the papers hadn't been given to the prime minister despite their importance. When word of that got out, the poison machine received a talking point: "Once again the defense establishment is hiding material from Netanyahu." (This echoed the allegations of treason regarding October 7, which continue to thrive among those toxic warriors.)
If they stand trial, the accused will become the heroes of the Netanyahu cult. Each of them will be the next Elor Azaria, the soldier who shot dead a Palestinian assailant who was already lying motionless on the ground.
That's how it always is. After every violation, whether criminal, governmental or moral, the Bibi-ists turn the criminals into martyrs. Just like the leader.