Bibi has yet to make an IDF chief of staff hire that he hasn't come to regret
Binyamin Netanyahu has yet to make a senior military appointment that he hasn’t come to regret. The clash between the prime minister and IDF chief of staff Eyal Zamir, his own appointee, predates the dramatic cabinet meeting last Thursday night at which the decision was made to occupy Gaza (or, as the cabinet euphemistically phrased it, “control” it).
A week before the cabinet convened, the chief of staff had thrown down the gauntlet. According to a report that drew only a half-hearted denial from him a week later, Zamir warned Netanyahu that he wouldn’t hesitate to resign if the decision was made to conquer the Gaza Strip.
When Zamir was appointed in March this year, Netanyahu lauded him as an “attacking commander,” despite the fact that he saw him as a last resort — just another general from the same clique as Herzi Halevi and his predecessors, whom the 2025 Netanyahu sees as holdovers from an outdated elite.
Bibi would much rather have parachuted in his military secretary Roman Gofman, or Major General David Zini, the kippah-serugah-wearing Shin Bet-chief-designate. But neither was an option. With left-wing voters constituting half the mobilized reservists, a shrinking force amid war fatigue two years in, sending in his own man, or a general perceived by some as borderline messianic, would have put the nail in the coffin of the IDF’s apolitical image.
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