Hi chief, bye chief: 6 things to know for January 15

1. Tell, Aviv: Israel’s changing of the guard is more fraught than the high-stepping Wagah border ceremony, and a lot less exciting. Nonetheless, new IDF chief Aviv Kochavi’s first day in office still gets wide coverage in the press Tuesday morning, with reporters following him from stop to stop.

• Much of the coverage is focusing on trying to assess who Kochavi is, even if that means delving deep down into his past.
• “Can he take orders well? Is he a good friend,” a buddy of Kochavi’s is asked on Israel Radio early Tuesday morning. (He answers yes to both.)
• Yedioth Ahronoth, which a day earlier ran a picture of the incoming top soldier in kindergarten, follows it up Tuesday with a front-page picture of Kochavi’s mug shot from when he enlisted in August 1982.
• “Revolutionary, creative and a vegetarian,” reads a headline in Israel Hayom, alongside a picture of a gap-toothed pre-pubescent Kochavi: “He’s seen as remarkably intelligent and as a philosopher, and has an exceptional ability to express himself, with a winning charisma. He’s sharp and witty, loves to draw, is known as a music lover, and will be the first vegetarian IDF chief.”

2. Beyond corn schnitzel: That information is about as useful as a screen door on a submarine, so some also look at what Kochavi will face beyond the finest corn schnitzel cutlets at Defense Ministry headquarters.

• “Kochavi has planned well for the role and sketched out the general guidelines for how he sees the army will act under him. Given that from the chief of staff’s seat, under pressures and challenges, reality sometimes looks different,” the Walla news site notes.
• Yedioth’s Yossi Yehoshua writes that he’s always been a “reformator.” “Even now, as he takes over the 14th-story bureau, he will try slowly, without hurting his predecessor Gadi Eisenkot, to carry out a series of significant measures in building a force and the perception of action. One can guess that members of the General Staff will hear the words ‘thought-out’ and ‘creative’ a lot from him.”
• In Haaretz, though, columnist Yagil Levy warns that Kochavi also has a problematic side, pointing to decisions he made during 2002’s Operation Defensive Shield that led to many Palestinian deaths, as well as his threat to sue an academic who criticized him in a journal in 2006.
• “The media, civil society groups and academia should keep a close eye on the incoming chief,” he writes.

3. Goodbye Gadi: There’s also the last of a batch of farewells for Eisenkot, most of them laudatory.

• “He didn’t stop working until the last minute,” Yedioth gushes, reporting on him spending his last day visiting injured troops and the parents of a soldier killed in a training accident.
• Even Israel Hayom, which had no small amount of quibbles with the top troop and his refusal to toe a right-wing line, admits that Eisenkot’s decision to make sure to not exact collective punishment on Palestinians and prosecute Hebron shooter Elor Azaria were correct. Well, almost.
• “The chief of staff took the right moral stance on Azaria, even if his timing in making statements prevented the possibility of ending the affair in a way that was less harmful to the military,” the paper’s Haim Shine writes.
• Haaretz’s main editorial, meanwhile, is unequivocal in its praise for the outgoing chief: “But in his major test – his conduct as a public servant who could stand up to politicians and a political environment that often exerted pressure that was not on point – Eisenkot came through with honor.”

4. Off to party: Like every other Israeli out of the army, Eisenkot will probably grow his hair out and head to some exotic locale with just a backpack and the phone number of a friend of a friend who knows where to score some hash.

• At least, that’s what Hadashot news suggests, polling former troops on where they think crazy Gadi should buy a one-way ticket to. Among the top choices: Laos, Thailand, Austria, the Philippines and Vietnam.
• “Gadi, the most most important thing is that you have some Shoresh sandals,” one Noa Barzilai tells him from Thailand.
• Or maybe he should consider Saudi Arabia, where the kingdom is pressing ahead with an ambitious plan to open up to tourists, centered around the stunning and undeveloped site of al-Ula.
• “Resorts are being planned, residents are receiving training to work with tourists, and teams of archaeologists and researchers are conducting surveys of historical sites and environmental features over roughly 9,000 square miles,” The Washington Post reports.

5. Don’t speak: His predecessor Benny Gantz may have some advice, but he would have to open his mouth to give it, something he may never do again after being lambasted following a short statement in which he promised to “fix” the nation-state law, something far from controversial.

• “Breaks his silence and breaks left,” reads a top headline in Israel Hayom, which like Netanyahu has tried to paint Gantz as a radical.
• Yedioth Ahronoth, meanwhile, points out that Gantz’s statement was quite close to one by New Right leader Naftali Bennett in July and the paper’s Sima Kadmon says it shows the true colors of the right, and how afraid it is of him.
• To Haaretz’s Rogel Alpher, Gantz’s silence, and the reaction that followed his milquetoast statement, shows the true colors of the whole country.
• “Gantz isn’t left, or right. He’s not even center. He’s nothing. He’s the black hole the country has collapsed into.”

6. Spaceballs: At a ceremony for Kochavi, Netanyahu spent much of his speech attacking Iran, which he accused of lying over its satellite launch, using it as a cover to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles.

• Israeli expert Tal Inbar, though, says Iran’s statement about the vehicle failing to reach orbit is actually a step forward for the Islamic Republic.

Admitting a satellite failed launch by Iran is a sign of maturity in the Islamic Republic space program. In the past failed launches where either not announced or in the case of the 2017 Simorgh failed launch the launche was shwon but the FAILURE was not announced.

— Tal Inbar (@inbarspace) January 15, 2019