Analysis | Netanyahu Attacks His Top General as He Runs Out of Scapegoats for Gaza Failure
Here are the names of the some of the people who held senior positions in the Israeli government, military and intelligence agencies on the eve of Hamas' surprise attack on October 7:
Benjamin Netanyahu was the prime minister, a role he has held consecutively since 2009, with only a short break of 18 months during 2021-2022. Yoav Gallant was the Minister of Defense and a member of Netanyahu's Likud Party. Herzl Halevi was the IDF Chief of Staff. Ronen Bar was the head of the Shin Bet intelligence agency. Aharon Haliva was the head of military intelligence, and Yaron Finkelman, who holds a similar rank, was the head of the Southern Command. Yuli Edelstein was the chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
Only one of these people still holds the same job he did on October 7. Gallant was fired in November 2024, after he opposed a bill to exempt tens of thousands of young ultra-Orthodox men from military service while the country is at war; his position on this issue is supported by an overwhelming majority of the Israeli public, but runs against the interests of the Haredi parties who are an integral part of Netanyahu's governing coalition.
So, just weeks after leading the military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Gallant was sacked by Netanyahu.
Several months later, Halevi and Bar both resigned, after Netanyahu made clear his intention to fire them. Bar ran a legal battle to postpone the appointment of his successor, fearing correctly that Netanyahu would hand control of the powerful internal intelligence agency to a loyalist who would use it for improper political purposes. But eventually, after buying as much time as he could through the court system, Bar stepped down from the Shin Bet. Halevi did the same in the army and without the ensuing legal fight.
Former IDF Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi, right, and Eyal Zamir, his replacement, saluting at a ceremony in May.Credit: IDF Spokesperson's Unit
Sources close to Netanyahu have said that Zamir is welcome to resign, all but telling him not to let the door hit him on the way out. Netanyahu's son, Yair, has begun posting messages against the top general, accusing him of an attempted coup.
The other generals mentioned in the opening paragraph walked away long before him, and Edelstein – like Gallant, a member of Likud – was removed from his position two weeks ago by his own party for the same reason as the former Defense Minister: opposing the ultra-Orthodox demands on conscription.
Netanyahu perhaps thought that once all the individuals mentioned above would be out of office, he could take a victory lap – the last "survivor" of October 7, the only one not to pay a price for the catastrophic failures that happened on his watch. He led Israel on the worst day in its history, and he failed to protect the Jewish people from the most murderous antisemitic attack since the Holocaust.
While so many others who could have prevented this disaster and failed to do so are no longer in power, Netanyahu is still the prime minister. He now oversees a new disaster in Gaza, where 50 Israeli hostages still languish in the tunnels of Hamas, dozens of Israeli soldiers have died in recent weeks, and a failed plan to block aid from reaching the civilian population has resulted in a humanitarian crisis and accusations of deliberate mass starvation.
Former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant was replaced by Yisrael Katz in November.Credit: Chaim Goldberg/Flash90
Instead of celebrating this cynical "achievement," Netanyahu seems to regret it these days, because it means he is out of scapegoats and can no longer deflect the blame from himself by throwing it onto others. The prime minister and "the poison machine" – the pro-Netanyahu influence campaign boosted by supportive media outlets, loyal pundits and anonymous-yet-popular social media accounts – has been working hard since October 7.
They paint a twisted picture in which everyone in the country's top leadership, from Gallant and Halevi to Bar and Edelstein, is part of a secret cabal trying to weaken Israel and prevent it from winning the war in Gaza. From this perspective, Netanyahu is himself a victim of this ploy, rather than the man who has been in charge of the country for 95 percent of the last 16 years.
Most Israelis view the current state of the Gaza war as a resounding failure, and for good reason. In March 2025, almost five months ago, Netanyahu chose to break the terms of the cease-fire with Hamas and ordered the military to renew the war. He promised this would force Hamas to accept a new cease-fire and hostage release deal with conditions preferable to Israel.
Lishay Miran Lavi, the wife of hostage Omri Miran, demonstrating in Tel Aviv on Saturday to demand a hostage deal.Credit: Itay Cohen/Reuters
That promise, like so many others he has made over the years, fell flat. Instead of securing a new deal with Hamas, his decision to restart the war led to the deaths of almost 50 soldiers; exacerbated the suffering of the hostages and their families; and turned Israel into an international pariah, accused all over the world of starving Gaza's population.
Yet this fiasco is entirely of Netanyahu's making. The new IDF Chief of Staff, Eyal Zamir, was chosen by him specifically in order to carry out this failed operation, with the backing of Yisrael Katz, the embarrassing Likud apparatchik he chose to replace Gallant. Netanyahu's nemesis Bar is no longer running the Shin Bet.
Shlomi Binder, the current head of military intelligence appears weak, scared and submissive – he recently came especially at Netanyahu's request to the courtroomwhere his corruption trial takes place, in order to convince the judges overseeing the case that unique circumstances justify the cancellation of the prime minister's testimony. He hinted at progress toward the release of the hostages, and Netanyahu immediately received the "free pass" he required from the judges. More than a month has since passed; the hostages are still starving in Gaza.
Former Shin Bet head Ronen Bar, left, and IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir during the Israeli operation to kill Hamas leader Mohammed Sinwar in May.Credit: IDF Spokesperson's Unit
The problem for Netanyahu is that now, even some of his blind admirers appear somewhat perplexed. True to his form, he is trying to turn Zamir, the general he himself chose to replace Halevi, into the new scapegoat. In the background are two points of crisis. One is the political problem of Haredi enlistment – the same issue for which Gallant was fired and Edelstein removed from his Knesset committee.
Zamir has been clear, in public and in closed-door briefings, that he needs more soldiers to carry out the military's missions properly, and that any bill that exempts the ultra-Orthodox from the duty to serve will harm the country's security. This is not the kind of loyalty Netanyahu was hoping to see from his hand-picked Chief of Staff.
The second reason is Netanyahu's growing appetite to expand the war in Gaza to areas of the coastal enclave where Hamas is known to be holding living hostages – those who have already survived 670 days of torture, hunger and bombardments since October 7. Zamir strongly opposes this idea, as he worries that getting close to the places where these hostages are being held will be akin to signing their death warrants.
Jon Polin, the father of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, speaking at his son's funeral last year in Jerusalem.Credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90
Zamir has enough tragic precedence to rely on – more than 40 hostages who were taken alive by Hamas into Gaza have died in captivity during the war – including U.S.-Israeli citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was murdered in Rafah alongside five other hostages when Israeli soldiers approached the tunnel where Hamas was holding.
In response to Zamir's concerns, sources close to Netanyahu have said that Zamir is welcome to resign, all but telling him not to let the door hit him on the way out. Netanyahu's son, Yair, from the safety and comfort of Miami, has begun posting messages against the top general (whose own children, it should be noted, are actually serving in the military reserves), accusing him of an attempted coup and claiming that his father never actually wanted to appoint him.
Still, the chances that Zamir's recruitment to the role of the ultimate scapegoat will succeed seem quite low at the moment. The disastrous decisions that led Israel to its current strategic paralysis are all Netanyahu's and his alone.