Israel's New Army Chief Embodies the Military's New Belligerence
The special session of the security cabinet next week is shaping up to be a big day for the far-right parties. The intention is to authorize no fewer than 20 settler farms and outposts across the West Bank, including Avnat, Kedem, Sa-Nur and Homesh.
If the last two names ring a bell, it's because they were evacuated in 2005 as part of the pullout from Gaza and part of the northern West Bank. For the past decade they have been inhabited on and off by settlers.
The goal at the security cabinet is twofold: Poke a finger in the eye of the Palestinian Authority (Donald Trump will probably be indifferent) and butter up far-rightist Bezalel Smotrich. Most of the public views Smotrich as the finance minister. Wrong. To him, his main task is his other function as a "minister at the Defense Ministry" and the true sovereign in the West Bank.
A West Bank settler at Homesh in 2023.Credit: Amir Levy
The actual defense minister, Israel Katz, has divested himself of all his powers there. The army's Central Command and the office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories have similarly been stripped of all influence.
And there are other reasons that joy now reigns on the far right. Smotrich and the old-new national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, believe they have halted the multistage hostage deal. The predawn airstrike in Gaza on Tuesday recalled an event at the start of the 2008-09 Gaza war, when Israel killed dozens of Hamas police cadets at their graduation ceremony.
- It wasn't a lustrous week for Israeli democracy, and next week could be worse
- Israel is already doing in the West Bank what it threatens to do in Gaza
- Israeli army operations are making West Bank refugee camps unlivable
The distinctions between the organization's military and political arms have become blurred since the October 7 massacre, but many of the targets in the attacks so far have been political leaders, including the prime minister in Gaza, Issam al-Daalis. These senior people, who apparently did not feel in danger during the cease-fire, were killed with many members of their families.
According to Hamas, more than 400 people were killed in the first bombing run, among them about 100 children. The intense rage over this will feed the cycle of revenge.
In recent days, the army has sent small contingents into northern Gaza and into the eastern part of the Netzarim corridor, which bisects the enclave. Many non-reservist units have been placed in a state of preparedness. At the moment, the reserves haven't been mobilized extensively. The army is awaiting instructions but also knows that difficulties will arise in the call-up. Many units of reservists are already suffering a severe turnout crisis.
Ruins in Gaza on Thursday.Credit: Leo Correa/AP
This time, some reservists might also be refusing for political reasons – particularly amid their fear for the lives of the hostages still in Gaza. Still, the October 7 massacre changed the debate about outspoken refusal, whether based on fear for the hostages or the fate of Israeli democracy. Large sections of the public have no tolerance for refusal.
Before that Israeli bombing Tuesday, three proposals were on the agenda for mediation deals without the return of all the hostages. The American envoys spoke about the return of one hostage – the soldier Edan Alexander who also holds U.S. citizenship – and the bodies of four American hostages, or the release of five living hostages and about 10 bodies. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded that twice as many living hostages be freed.
What happens next is up to Trump. Will he give Israel more leeway for bombing and a ground incursion, while threatening to occupy the whole Gaza Strip? Or will he push for a bigger plan, including the entry of Arab forces, donations from Gulf states and the forming of a Palestinian government of technocrats in the hope of offloading Hamas?
In the army's deliberations ahead of the resumption of fighting, disagreements emerged on the scale of the threat to the hostages' lives. Representing Southern Command, Brig. Gen. (res.) Erez Winner (who was dismissed this week after he lost classified files) maintained that the army would be careful and avoid hitting the hostages. Others were less optimistic.
So far, the new chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, Eyal Zamir, is sufficing with general remarks about a commitment to the hostages' safety. His officers are still trying to discern his intentions.
Israeli soldiers in southern Gaza.Credit: IDF Spokesperson's Unit
Defense Minister Katz, who proudly discussed Zamir's appointment at a cabinet meeting a few weeks ago, read at length from the transcript of his interview with Zamir before giving him the nod. It included a commitment to strive for Hamas' defeat. The right-wing ministers had good cause to rejoice.
"A different General Staff is taking shape here," says a major general in the reserves who served under a number of chiefs of staff. "It's not necessarily a question of political affiliation, and not even a question of religious Zionist soldiers.
"After the massacre, there was a shift toward aggressiveness. The new generals are eager to project that they're determined, that they won't blink in the face of the security threats. The current approach is to shoot first and ask questions later."
According to this officer, despite all the talk about refusal to serve, it's likely that Zamir's first test will be to deal with ideological deviations on the right wing.
Magicians then and now
The journalist and author Amnon Dankner (1946-2013) must have had prophetic powers. Toward the end of 1982, when Israel was deep in the Lebanese mire, Dankner published his first collection of short stories, based on his Haaretz articles over the previous two years.
Besides the marvelous writing, the book is a kind of postcard from the tempestuous Israel of the early '80s. The trauma of the 1973 Yom Kippur War mixes with that of the 1982 Lebanon conflict. In the background we read about spiritual quests, religious penitence, skyrocketing inflation, greed and a host of dark attempts to satiate it, ranging from arms exports to Latin America to land theft in the West Bank.
In one story, "November 1982," which actually was written in July of that year, Dankner vividly forecast the worst of the terrorist attacks by Jews in those days: the murder of the left-wing activist Emil Grunzweig at a Jerusalem demonstration in February 1983.
Journalist and author Amnon Dankner in Jerusalem in 2011.Credit: Emil Salman
But most harrowing is the third story in the collection, "The Magician of Brosh Outpost," which was written under the impact of the Yom Kippur War. In this story, a company of reservists on an unspecified front (whose geographical location, however, corresponds with the fighting with Egypt) unwillingly hosts a bizarre elderly magician, who was thrust on the soldiers by the army's chief education officer. The magician is received suspiciously, but soon he's captivating the soldiers and their commanders.
The problem is that just then the enemy launches a surprise attack on the line of outposts. The troops at the Brosh outpost, enthralled by the magician's tricks, have done nothing to prepare for the attack. The magician assures them that they must place their trust in God; he himself will sprinkle a little holy water and the danger will pass.
Only the narrator, the company clerk, insists that the danger is real. He escapes from the outpost while his commanders and soldiers unwittingly await their deaths.
If it's not clear enough from Dankner's description ("a funny man in a dark striped suit – in the middle of August!"), things become clear from the accompanying illustration by the cartoonist Dudu Geva. The magician, who speaks "in a kind of a Polish accent," is a riff on Menachem Begin, and the story is an allegory that warns against the excessive confidence of Israel's politicians, generals and intelligence chiefs.
Dankner is leery of people who float slogans crudely mixing nationalism, religious rites and sweeping scorn for the Arab enemy. But it's impossible to read this story today without thinking about the current political magician, Netanyahu, and the blindness that afflicted him on the eve of the war.
"As I see it, the IDF is at full fitness and ready for all challenges on all fronts," the prime minister declared in August 2023, two months before the massacre.
Dankner's description of the incursion corresponds almost entirely with the events of the morning of October 7, 2023. "I look to the west and am immediately appalled – I see the people on the other side removing the nets from their vehicles, revving up their engines and taking an offensive position," Dankner writes.
"'Look what's happening there,' I shout to the magician. 'Look! They'll come to slaughter us like dogs in this crappy bunker.' But he doesn't answer me."
Escaping with his last remaining strength, the narrator looks behind as the surprise attack unfolds. All the outposts are going up in flames.
"Only at the Brosh outpost is there no movement, and for a moment I think that maybe, after all, there's something to this crappy magician," Dankner writes. "But then I see the first enemy half-track going in, and after it another and another, and the soldiers getting out of their vehicles and sweeping through our structures, shooting and throwing grenades in all directions."