Yoav Galant’s abuse of power exemplifies what is rotten with the IDF
If anyone still had a shred of a doubt that General Yoav Galant is unworthy of command, then Brigadier General Zvi Fogel removed it yesterday. Fogel, who served as Galant’s Chief of Staff when the latter was the commanding general of the Southern Command, fondly admitted (Hebrew) that “we, the senior commanders” dismissed Maariv journalist Kalman Libskind, who exposed the Schloss Galant affair, of his reserve duties.
According to Fogel, “Why did he [Libskind] wait for us to tell him ‘go home’, and then start whining like a baby or a stricken cat because we sent him away? You can’t, see, be a soldier in the Command with the Commanding General, when you’re writing he can’t be a general. Do you see the double standard?”
So, as far as Galant and his merry band of sycophants are concerned, they can use their military authority in order to harm civilians who criticize them, out of a concept saying that the duty of a soldier is to serve the officers. In a normal military, the duty of soldiers is serving the military, not the temporary generalissimo de jour. According to Galant, soldiers are feudal vassals of the general, and they remain such even as civilians. The army, c’est moi, says General – hopefully, soon retired – Yoav Galant.
As has been established (Hebrew), Galant had no problem convincing other officers to lie to the civil authorities. Now we see him as a bully who has no problems abusing power to harm civilians he perceives as enemies. Were the IDF a normal military, Galant’s epaulets would have been taken off because of such abuse of power against an NCO. But then the IDF was never an army, just a militia – and it is rapidly turning into a junta.
Yediot published today an article about the army’s culture of lies. Among the hair raising details (my favorite: a colonel who admits that he routinely writes evaluation reports of subordinates not according to their abilities but rather according to what his commander thinks of them), Yediot buried the lede: turns out there are claims that General Gadi Eizenkott, a chief of staff wannabe, is suspected of having provided false evidence in the case of retired Brigadier ‘Imad Fares; Eizenkott denies a phone conversation with Fares that two CID investigators say they witnessed. Deliciously, Fares was removed from active service for lying – to Eizenkott.
If all these cases were to lead to a purification of the IDF, and to the immediate removal of all those generals and colonels who ran the IDF as a private fiefdom, something good might still come of the whole stink. But it isn’t likely to happen: senior officers – Eizenkott among them – have recently testified on behalf of Colonel Omri Burberg, who ordered his soldier to fire a rubber bullet at a handcuffed, blindfolded Palestinian prisoner, and then tried to place the blame on the soldier. The senior brass claimed the case did not reflect on Burberg “as a commander.” He kept his rank; the soldier lost his.
The junta can look after its people; but until the Israeli public realizes we’re dealing with a junta, little will change.