Bitter feuds between politicians in this country, even within the same party, are nothing new. They are as common as screaming matches in Knesset committee meetings and bleary-eyed, late-night votes.
What is less common – and far more problematic – is an embittered and very public rupture between Israel’s political leadership and its top military brass.
Yet that is exactly what erupted this week, with Defense Minister Israel Katz and IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir locked in a bruising confrontation that spilled into the open, dominated headlines, and led to public questions about whether the defense establishment – which is still managing four “hot” fronts (Gaza, Judea and Samaria, Lebanon, and Syria) – is losing its focus.
At the surface level, the fight is about investigations, promotions, and chains of command. The feud, however, reveals something distinctly Israeli: the public’s instinctive tendency to take the military’s side when it clashes with the political echelon.
Israel is hardly the only democracy where citizens admire their army. But few democracies display the kind of reflexive, almost automatic deference to the military that Israelis do, even after an institutional failure as monumental as October 7.
The paradox is unmistakable in the current brouhaha. Listen to the mainstream media, and the impression you walk away with is that Zamir is in the right and Katz, for political purposes, is trying to undermine him. It’s a familiar pattern.
Back in August, when the two men clashed publicly over the appointment of brigadier-generals, Maariv ran a poll showing Zamir with a 50% favorability rating and Katz at just 32%.
“The public has had its say,” the headline declared. “After the attacks on Chief of Staff Zamir, there is one winner.” And the winner, according to the poll results, was Zamir.
There is little reason to believe a fresh poll today would look much different.
The trigger for the latest blow-up was Zamir’s announcement of the findings of the Turgeman Committee, the follow-up probe to one set up by his predecessor, Herzi Halevi, to assess the army’s failures on October 7.
The committee reviewed – and found lacking – the initial inquiry. Zamir announced he was removing several senior officers from the IDF and formally censuring others.
Katz rejected the findings, believing they did not go far enough and that the investigation failed to examine officers who had held senior roles years ago. Zamir, by the way, was one such officer, serving as OC Southern Command from 2015 to 2018.
Katz then announced yet another review panel to reexamine the reexamination – a had-gadya chain of committees that helped create a perception that the main objective was to keep the spotlight on the military’s failures and off those of the political echelon, which has done nothing to examine its own culpability.
During this newest 30-day review period, further IDF appointments would be frozen.
Zamir responded sharply, warning that freezing senior appointments harms the IDF’s preparedness at a very volatile time.
And while Katz did not repeat the blunt line he used during August’s earlier dust-up – that “the days when the army made its own decisions are over” – his actions this week unmistakably echoed it: freezing promotions, ordering a parallel investigation, and signaling that the IDF chief does not get to operate without political oversight.
Katz’s underlying point – that the military’s failures on October 7 show exactly why the generals’ decisions should not be rubber-stamped but rather carefully scrutinized by the political echelon – did not gain much public traction.
Israelis' instinct is to side with the IDF over the government
TO MANY Israelis, the substantive details mattered less than the familiar dynamic. When confronted with a standoff between the government and the chief of staff, their instinct was again to side with the army.
Even the catastrophic failures of October 7 have not fundamentally altered the public’s belief that the IDF – for all its shortcomings – remains the most trustworthy national institution.
Part of this is because the IDF has had numerous astounding successes since October 7. Part also has to do with history and identity. The IDF is woven into the country’s DNA.
It is seen not merely as an institution, but as the nation’s indispensable shield, melting pot, and unifying ethos.
In the Israel Democracy Institute’s annual survey of the public’s confidence in national institutions in 2024, 77% expressed trust in the army, compared to only 25% for the government. The army consistently scores at the top of this list.
The military is still widely viewed as professional, apolitical, and mission-driven; the political echelon is seen as partisan, self-preserving, and forever spinning its way out of accountability.
This instinctive trust gives every clash between politicians and generals a predictable rhythm. Israelis tend to believe the IDF acts out of professional necessity and national security concerns, while they tend to believe politicians act out of political interest – even when that may not be entirely fair.
And therein lies the contradiction: the political leadership argues, not unreasonably, that the military failed grievously on October 7 and that oversight is therefore necessary.
But the same leadership refuses to submit itself to the very scrutiny it demands of the IDF. The public sees that asymmetry clearly –and resents it.
This is one reason why the Katz-Zamir dispute this week resonated so intensely – and so negatively.
It fits into a broader pattern that has played out since October 7, when one senior security figure after the next either resigned or was pushed aside: former defense minister Yoav Gallant, former chief of staff Herzi Halevi, former head of military intelligence Aharon Haliva, former Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) head Ronen Bar, and others.
In one way or another, they were all cast as the chief culprits of the fiasco.
The political message, spoken or implied, became familiar: the problem is the generals, not the political judgment that shaped the prewar reality.
This instinct to deflect blame is not new. And Zamir’s emergence as an independent voice has rattled that pattern. Zamir was not expected to disrupt the template.
When appointed, he was seen as loyal, ideologically aligned, and operationally aggressive – precisely the sort of chief of staff the government assumed would be in sync with the political echelon.
But since taking over in March, he has signaled, in statements and actions, that his primary loyalty is to professional responsibility, not political coordination.
In remarks delivered Wednesday on the anniversary of David Ben-Gurion’s passing, he said that leadership “is the ability to bear a burden, even when the burden feels unbearable,” and spoke of the need for “leadership that recognizes failure and also dares to lead change.
Not evasive leadership but leadership that looks the truth in the eye.”
Was he referring to political leadership or military leadership? He was vague, ambiguous.
Sources close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu soon after told Kan News that the prime minister believed he had “made a mistake” in appointing Zamir, complaining that he was “acting too independently.”
It was not the independence itself that rattled officials; it was Zamir’s constant reminder that genuine accountability is what is demanded.
The stakes of the current tension go far beyond personality clashes. Israel, especially in wartime, cannot afford open hostility between its political and military leadership.
October 7 demonstrated how dangerous public fissures can be. The months preceding the attack were marked by highly visible friction between politicians and generals over the judicial overhaul and over how to deal with reservists who threatened not to serve.
That spectacle of division transmitted an unmistakable signal to Israel’s enemies: this is a country distracted by its own internal turmoil.
It is widely believed that those public cracks factored into Hamas’s catastrophic miscalculation that Israel’s divisions reflected weakness. Yet today, again, political and military leaders are engaged in dueling statements, mutual recriminations, and escalating mistrust.
The prime minister has not definitively stepped in to end the feud.
Ministers and sources float the possibility of replacing Katz, replacing Zamir, or reshuffling portfolios – not because strategy demands it, but because the relationship has become so sour as to be unworkable.
To Hamas, Hezbollah, or Iran, this can look like more than a political dispute. It can look like a structural fracture – and, once again, a mistaken perception of weakness can invite miscalculation.
Strip away the noise, however, and the contours of the dispute become simpler. Zamir is trying to impose accountability inside the IDF and move forward with the Turgeman committee’s corrective process.
Katz wants to ensure the political echelon maintains oversight and is pressing to widen the inquiry to include more officers from earlier years, shifting the spotlight further onto the army.
Netanyahu wants stability and quiet in the defense establishment, neither of which he currently has. And the Israeli public, exhausted by war and anguished by the failures of October 7, simply wants the feud to end.
They also want something more fundamental: a political echelon willing to hold itself to the same standard of scrutiny it demands of the army.
Until that happens, every clash between politicians and generals will be viewed through the same lens: credibility. And in that contest, the IDF – even battered, bruised, and humbled – still holds the advantage.