What Do You Know About the IDF, Israel's Sacred Cow?
What do we know about our army? Almost nothing at all. What do we know about the quality of its commanders? Must less. Every senior officer appointed to a position is immediately crowned by the chorus of military reporters as a "respected officer" – always a respected officer, but it is unclear who is respected and why – and then his term passes without anyone in the civilian population having any idea whether he was a good commander. The generals and colonels are not interviewed, except by cloying, embarrassing interviews organized by the IDF Spokesperson's Office. No one knows for sure: Are they good? Are they bad? Is the army under their command any good? Who knows?
They are later discharged from the army and become studio commentators and politicians' poodles, and then their full nakedness is revealed. It turns out that we've been tricked, we were deceived. The respected officer is sometimes a fool; the secret agent is a complete idiot. Without naming names, there are countless examples of this.
Many venerated IDF, Mossad and Shin Bet officers lose their halo of glory when they step out into the light. It would be better for them to stay in the shadows, especially in the past two years when retired colonels took over the TV studios. Every officer and intelligence agent thinks he knows how to babble on every subject in the world – and the embarrassment only intensified.
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SubscribeAre these the people who have been managing our lives and our deaths? Did we worship them?
Israel was in a frenzy over them this week. Will the appointment of General Shadow as military attaché in Washington go forward? Will General Nothing stay as the head of Military Intelligence? We're holding our breath. No one has any idea who they are or what they are worth, but everyone has an opinion about who is worthy and who is not. The same goes for the battle of the giants between the defense minister and the IDF chief of staff; everyone has an opinion about who is the good guy and who is the bad guy.
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Ostensibly, the democratic camp should be pleased that there is a civilian defense minister who puts the brakes on the army and sets limits for it. The fact that it is actually the right-wing camp that is slaughtering the greatest sacred cow of all, the IDF, should be encouraging, even if it is being done for the wrong reasons.
The IDF has become an unrestrained monster. Only the complete and insane chaos in Israel could bring about a situation in which the director of the secret service, the Shin Bet, is the gatekeeper in charge of safeguarding democracy, and the IDF chief of staff is the hero of the liberal camp, the victim of the bad guy, the civilian defense minister. It's true that Defense Minister Israel Katz did everything he could to earn a name that evokes ridicule and revulsion, but what do we know about his opponent, Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir? Is he a good chief of staff? A bad one? Who knows? Wait until he sits in the TV studios as a civilian, and we might find ourselves cringing again in embarrassment.
Defense Minister Israel Katz (L) and Benjamin Netanyahu visiting the Syrian border last Wednesday.Credit: Kobi Gideon/GPO
What is known does not interest most Israelis. Zamir is the army commander who turned Gaza into a graveyard and wasteland of rubble. He is the army commander who committed (and commits) war crimes and genocide. He is the army commander whose soldiers rustle Palestinians' cattle and does not bring them to justice. Any support for him, even against Katz the Satan, is support for his iniquities, which will one day come to light and be judged, it should be hoped, at least in the court of history, if not sooner.
It's hard to believe how his clear involvement in such horrific violations of international law does not enhance or erode the public's opinion of him. It's as if that is a marginal issue, an obscure hobby. And it's not just him, but all IDF commanders and soldiers – none of them are judged for their iniquities. They are forgiven everything, because they protect us, ostensibly. They are even forgiven for the October 7 failure. In the Sparta of 2025, the IDF is still above any suspicion, a kind of sacred cow.
Ostensibly, the democratic camp should be pleased that there is a civilian defense minister who puts the brakes on the army and sets limits for it.