When the IDF Chief Made Generals Cry

The IDF chief of staff’s office is the army’s Wailing Wall, but even it had never seen generals cry. It happened this week, when Eyal Zamir told several generals they would not be called for reserve duty.

From the outside, it looked like a symbolic, meaningless punishment, inconsistent with the historic scale of the failure. But the ousted officers saw it as a terrible insult — a stain that cannot be erased. One of them burst into tears when he received the news. “You’ve killed me and my family,” he said.

People around the chief of staff admit the result was not ideal. The public struggles to understand how the greatest failure in the IDF’s history ends with the removal of just two mid-level officers. The reason lies in the principled decision to limit the investigation of the failure to October 7 itself. Otherwise, hundreds of people would be candidates for dismissal, and Zamir would have had to dismiss his two predecessors — Herzi Halevi and Aviv Kohavi — from the reserves as well.

Then came the operational consideration of keeping the current head of Military Intelligence, Shlomi Binder. The argument was that dismissing him now would harm national security — yet the result is still puzzling. Another distortion was created by equating former intelligence chief Aharon Haliva, who believed no action against Hamas was needed, with former Southern Command chief Yaron Finkelman, who rushed overnight from his home in the north to his post.

Does Chief of Staff Zamir, like his predecessors, have his “favorite sons” who he wants to protect? Of course, the answer is yes. Two of them — Binder in intelligence and Omer Tischler, who he wants to be the next Air Force chief — also enjoy support in the government.

But beyond that, the guiding idea was to allow the IDF to move on from investigations that began poorly and dragged on endlessly. Zamir’s suspicion is that the goal is to keep the army stuck in the mud indefinitely, and that’s what enraged him.

Perhaps he erred in reacting so sharply toward the political echelon. There are things a chief of staff should not publish through the IDF Spokesperson about politicians, even if he is fed up. One can also assume that the army will survive 30 days without appointments without it causing “real harm to Israel’s security.”

Maybe this unnecessary clash will mark a longer calm at the top. Still, it’s a bit strange that from this week people will remember what happened to the IDF chief of staff — and not what happened to the chief of staff of Hezbollah.