Cabinet said to slam senior IDF officer for public criticism of Bennett

Government ministers on Sunday reportedly berated senior IDF officer Maj. Gen. Yair Golan for his attack on Education Minister Naftali Bennett, saying that military officers are forbidden from expressing public opinions about political leaders.

According to the Walla news website, Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz told the cabinet meeting on Sunday that Golan should be reprimanded, after the former IDF deputy chief of staff said Bennett “weakens the army and the State of Israel.”

“Elected officials make a habit of mistreating public servants, those who are not elected and cannot respond and speak out. It’s an obscene practice,” Golan also told the 103FM radio station last Thursday.

Golan was responding to the education minister’s claim that the army was too concerned with the legalities of war to fight effectively.  “We impose on our warriors legal and conceptual hoops” they must jump through, said Bennett. “Our warriors are more worried about the military advocate general than about [Hamas leader] Yahya Sinwar in Gaza.”

The cabinet agreed that Golan’s statement was inappropriate and that although IDF officers are invited to express their professional opinions behind closed doors, they must not publicly express views on ministers while serving in the military, according to Hebrew media reports.

Golan, and other current and former members of the IDF as well as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, took issue with Bennett’s claim.

That included the IDF’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, who opened a meeting with the army’s general staff last week by backing Military Advocate General Maj. Gen. Sharon Afek.

“The MAG [corps] is part of the IDF’s strength. It stands shoulder to shoulder with the army’s commanders and warriors in carrying out their operational goals and winning on the battlefield,” Eisenkot said in comments released by his office to the press.

The chief of staff demanded that the IDF be “kept out of the political debate.”

“IDF soldiers are not afraid of anyone,” Netanyahu wrote in a brief tweet last Monday in response to Bennett’s remarks.

Bennett’s comments also drew criticism from Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, a retired major general who once headed the MAG corps.

“There is no truth to that statement,” Mandelblit said of Bennett’s criticism.

Earlier this year, 100 members of bereaved families wrote to then-defense minister Avigdor Liberman asking that Golan not be nominated as the next chief of staff in light of several controversial statements he made about the mistreatment of Palestinians by the army.

Golan once said it was “intolerable” that Israeli soldiers place Palestinian civilians in harm’s way instead of themselves.

“In the presence of civilians we take upon ourselves risks, and rightly so,” he was heard saying on recordings made in 2006. “It’s unacceptable that in the name of preventing risk we would decide that now we are going to mow down an apartment building. You would kill women, children, those involved. It’s intolerable.”

If “an army unit needs to take risks in order not to harm bystanders, yes, it will take those risks not to harm bystanders,” he said.

Later in the recording, he warns soldiers that not every suspect person is a terrorist and tells them they can’t just kill people.

“Not in every combat situation are we all right-wing, are we all about to be slaughtered, and not every woman is hiding a terrorist behind her,” said Golan, then a commander in the Judea and Samaria Division. “I expect commanders to understand situations and take reasonable steps.”

Golan also drew public ire in a national Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony in 2016, when he compared trends in Israeli society to those of pre-World War II Germany.

At an official ceremony in front of the Western Wall in Jerusalem, the major-general had said that “if there is something that frightens me in the memory of the Holocaust, it is identifying horrifying processes that occurred in Europe… 70, 80 and 90 years ago and finding evidence of their existence here in our midst, today, in 2016.”

While his critique of Israeli society was likely aimed at support for Jewish extremist actions, Golan specifically touched upon the issue of moral flaws within the army, saying the strength of the IDF was its ability to thoroughly investigate and punish wrongdoers “and take responsibility for the good and the bad” without justifying their actions or attempting to cover them up.

The speech came amid hand-wringing over the case of Elor Azaria, a soldier who shot and killed a wounded and disarmed Palestinian assailant in Hebron months earlier.