RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jns.org/yoav-gallants-exit-stage-left/

Former Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant’s resignation from the Knesset, which he tendered on Jan. 1, became official at 10 a.m. on Sunday morning. Despite pressure from retired defense officials-turned-talking heads that he reverse his decision, Gallant—whom Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu finally fired from his Cabinet post in early November—remained steadfast.

In a press conference Wednesday evening to announce the move, however, he indicated that he’d be returning to the political arena in the future. Given his simultaneous declaration of loyalty to Likud principles and harsh critique of its chairman, he seemed to be hinting at a plan to beat Bibi in the party’s next primary race.

If that’s what he’s thinking, he needs to have his head examined. Given his behavior since the government was sworn in at the end of 2022, he’d be lucky at this point to garner enough support among Likud voters to obtain a realistic spot on the party’s list for the 26th Knesset, let alone rise to the top of the heap.

So a comeback on his part is probably going to involve forming or joining a different faction that describes itself as part of the “center” or “center-right,” yet resides on the left side of the electoral-poll pie chart with the rest of the “anybody but Bibi” crowd.

Another possibility is that the warm embrace he received by oppositionists and the protest movement will grow chilly once he’s no longer of use to them as a tool to weaken or oust Netanyahu through the crumbling of the coalition.

In such an event, Gallant may find himself in the same boat as many of his colleagues with illustrious careers in the Israel Defense Forces: settling for a highly paid gig at a politically correct think tank.

It’s just as well. For the past two years, Gallant has exhibited a greater allegiance to the elitist “old boys’ network” of the IDF top brass than to the government he was appointed to represent.

The first sign of this was in March 2023, when the country was in the throes of a serious schism over government plans to reform the judicial system. Prominent among the ill-wishing fear-mongers insisting that having a more equitable balance of power between the legislature and judiciary would be the end of Israeli democracy were mainly Air Force and Cyber Division reservists.

These paragons had the nerve to threaten not to serve under a “dictatorship.” Instead of promptly demoting them in rank or kicking them out of the army altogether, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi lent a sympathetic ear to their concerns.

And rather than forcing Halevi to get his troops in order, Gallant called for a halt to all judicial-reform legislation. Worse, he took the opportunity of a short visit by Netanyahu to London—for a meeting with then-British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak about Iran’s nuclear program—to give a speech to that effect.

He pulled this stunt a mere 48 hours after Netanyahu delivered an address that articulated the purpose of the reform—to enhance, not harm, Israeli democracy—and assure that all civil and minority rights would continue to be guaranteed by law.

Upon his return from the United Kingdom, Netanyahu rightly sacked Gallant. Mass demonstrations ensued, and Histadrut Labor Federation Secretary General Arnon Bar-David called for a general strike.

After local authorities, banks, shopping malls and even Ben-Gurion International Airport shut down, with the health-care system on the verge of following suit, Netanyahu declared a pause in judicial-reform legislation. Two weeks later, he said he and Gallant had patched things up.

Gallant’s victory was a pyrrhic one for the Jewish state. His willingness to side with the protesters against his own government not only deepened national divisions; it set a dangerous precedent for military insubordination. By elevating the grievances of “refuseniks,” Gallant handed Israel’s enemies a propaganda weapon and sabotaged IDF deterrence.

Fast forward to Oct. 7, 2023, the Black Sabbath when Hamas invaded southern Israel and committed the worst atrocities against Jews since the Holocaust. Though the entire nation was reeling from the horrifying intelligence and operational failures that enabled the surprise attack, Gallant—the official charged with Israel’s defense—escaped the wrath of all those who lambasted Netanyahu for the deadly fiasco. All he had to do in exchange for this metaphorical flak jacket was go against Bibi.

Nor did his clashes with the prime minister end there. On the contrary, emboldened by the support of previous detractors in the media and academia, he continued to undermine Netanyahu’s execution of the war in Gaza, and subsequently the IDF’s entry into Lebanon.

This made him a perfect patsy for the Biden administration, which viewed him as an ally in its efforts to bring about Netanyahu’s downfall. Apparently, he was happy to oblige.

Three days after a chummy phone conversation in May with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, for instance, Gallant took to the airwaves to put his disloyalty to Israeli policy on full display.

“I call on … Netanyahu to … declare that Israel will not establish civilian control over the Gaza Strip; that Israel will not establish military governance in the Gaza Strip; and that a governing alternative to Hamas in the Gaza Strip will be raised immediately,” he said, adding, “The ‘day after Hamas’ will only be achieved with Palestinian entities taking control of Gaza, accompanied by international actors, establishing a governing alternative to Hamas’s rule.”

Bibi should have gotten rid of Gallant right then, but anxiety got in the way. The one thing the coalition didn’t need was a repeat of the chaos that followed the previous time the premier handed the defense minister a proverbial pink slip.

The last straw for Gallant came months later, after his infidelity—in the form of leaks and other security breaches—became too blatant to ignore. Netanyahu put it this way: “In the midst of war, more than ever, complete trust is required between the prime minister and the defense minister. Unfortunately, even though such trust was present during the first months of the military campaign … during the past several months this trust between myself and the defense minister has begun to crack. … I have made multiple attempts to resolve these disagreements, but they became increasingly wider. They were also brought to the knowledge of the public in an inappropriate manner, and what is even worse, they have reached the knowledge of the enemy; our enemies have taken great delight in these disagreements and have derived much benefit from them.”

Lo and behold, the anticipated brouhaha didn’t materialize. Now-former Foreign Minister Israel Katz—a Likud and Netanyahu loyalist who had served in the IDF as a “mere” squad commander in the Paratroopers Brigade—replaced Gallant at the Defense Ministry.

As irony would have it and likely to Gallant’s dismay, Katz has proven to be anything but a disappointment. Gallant’s way of handling the humiliation was to wait a few weeks before making a grand exit from the parliamentary stage, while indicating that his departure was only a temporary farewell, not a final retreat.

Too bad he didn’t take a hike long ago, when he first revealed his real fealty and true khaki-green colors.