From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, March 25, 2025
Katz deepens feud with new IDF chief, says he can give him orders any way he wants to
Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent
Defense Minister Israel Katz doubles down after IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir last night told him, in a public statement, that he doesn’t receive instructions through the media.
Katz claims he can give orders to Zamir “in any way he deems appropriate” and the chief of staff’s response was “unnecessary and inappropriate.”
The row began after Brig. Gen. (res.) Oren Solomon, an officer who was responsible for the Gaza Division’s probe into its failures related to Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught, was booted from reserve duty and put under investigation by the Military Police for alleged “severe” operational security violations. Solomon, a member of the hawkish HaBithonistim group, told associates that he believes he was removed from reserve duty because he found fault in the IDF’s top command in the probe. He also sent a letter to Katz and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claiming the IDF was trying to cover up his investigation.
Katz then in statement last night said he wanted to meet with Solomon, and called on Zamir to examine the conduct of the Military Advocate General. Zamir responded by saying that he doesn’t receive instructions via the media, and that he backs the investigation, which is unrelated to Solomon’s October 7 probe.
“The instruction to the chief of staff to examine the circumstances that led to the investigation and the allegations presented in the letter that Brig. Gen. Solomon wrote to the prime minister and the defense minister regarding the IDF’s behavior toward him in light of the critical investigation he conducted, was given directly before the announcement was issued to the media due to the public aspect, and this without any intention of harming the investigation itself, which is being conducted by the Military Advocate General,” Katz says this morning.
Katz adds, in his public statement to the media, that “the media discourse surrounding the issue must now be stopped, which will be handled in other ways later.”
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