On Monday, Herzi Halevi will enter workplace as chief of workers of the Israel Protection Drive, because it marches right into a political battleground, with members of Israel’s new right-religious authorities taking goal on the military’s chain of command.
Below coalition agreements signed between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the leaders of the far-right Otzma Yehudit and Spiritual Zionism events, management over the appointment of a number of generals and authority over some navy models will likely be taken away from the IDF.
Halevi, who’s changing Aviv Kohavi, should deal with these new challenges along with the myriad of safety threats Israel faces, most notably an increase in violence within the West Financial institution.
The incoming chief of workers started his navy service in 1985, becoming a member of the paratrooper brigade. After finishing an officers coaching course and commanding a squadron, he moved over to the elite Sayeret Matkal reconnaissance unit, turning into its commander in 2001.
Halevi, 54, headed the Southern Command throughout a number of rounds of preventing between Israel and terrorists within the Gaza Strip in 2018 and 2019, in addition to the Army Intelligence Directorate. He most lately served as deputy chief of workers, a pivotal put up on the trail to the highest spot.
A husband and father of 4, in addition to an novice sprinter, Halevi holds a bachelors diploma in philosophy and enterprise administration from the Hebrew College, and a masters diploma in nationwide useful resource administration from the Nationwide Protection College in america.
He lives within the settlement of Kfar HaOranim, which straddles the West Financial institution border near town of Modiin. Regardless of the city being underneath the purview of the Binyamin Regional Council, it’s comparatively left-leaning, with near 80 p.c of the votes in Israel’s November election going to events now in Israel’s opposition.
Then-outgoing chief of Army Intelligence, Maj. Gen. Herzi Halevi, throughout a a ceremony appointing the brand new commander of the unit, on the Glilot navy base, close to Tel Aviv, March 28, 2018. (Miriam Alster/ Flash90/File)
Halevi, born in Jerusalem, was named after his uncle, additionally a paratrooper, who was killed on June 7, 1967, as Israeli forces recaptured the Western Wall through the Six Day Struggle.
Halevi’s father is a descendant of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. He was introduced up in a spiritual family, and studied at spiritual colleges throughout his childhood. He stopped carrying a kippah sooner or later throughout his navy service, however as soon as mentioned he’s nonetheless observant.
Halevi is greatest identified to the media because the “thinker common.”
In a 2013 interview with The New York Instances, Halevi mentioned he discovered his philosophy research way more helpful than enterprise administration within the navy.
“Individuals used to inform me that enterprise administration is for the sensible life and philosophy is for the spirit,” he mentioned. “By the years, I discovered it’s precisely the alternative — I used philosophy way more virtually.”
The practically decade-old interview said that Halevi was “thought-about a prime candidate to sometime lead the navy as chief of workers.”
Throughout the current appointment course of, Halevi contended in opposition to Eyal Zamir for the IDF’s prime place.
Zamir, who was as soon as Netanyahu’s navy secretary, was nominated as soon as earlier than for the place. However each instances, the front-running nominee was picked as a substitute, most lately Halevi, by former protection minister Benny Gantz.
Zamir is now within the technique of getting into the place of director-general of the Protection Ministry. Which means he’ll proceed to keep up a correspondence with Halevi as a part of his new function in a ministry that’s answerable for the military.
IDF chief Aviv Kohavi speaks at a ceremony marking the change of the Dwelling Entrance Command’s chief, July 17, 2022. (Israel Protection Forces)
Outgoing chief of workers Kohavi warned Friday in regards to the authorities’s plan to restructure navy authority within the West Financial institution, as a part of a brand new workplace inside the Protection Ministry given to Spiritual Zionism chair Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
Coalition agreements enable Smotrich to nominate the generals main the hybrid civil-military Coordinator for Authorities Actions within the Territories (COGAT) unit and its workplace overseeing many settlement points, the Civil Administration, topic to Netanyahu’s approval, however it’s unclear if the military will conform to such a change.
Presently, the most important common answerable for COGAT is appointed by the protection minister on the advice of the IDF chief of workers, and the brigadier common overseeing the Civil Administration is appointed by the chief of workers.
Smotrich was additionally given “civil accountability” over COGAT, which reportedly means he’s chargeable for issuing constructing permits within the West Financial institution, whereas the whole lot else is dealt with by Protection Minister Yoav Gallant. Smotrich has but to make any selections in his secondary ministerial place, and the Knesset’s authorized adviser mentioned final month that Gallant would have the ability to overrule him.
Halevi met with Smotrich final week, forward of Monday’s official handover ceremony. Kohavi, in the meantime, wouldn’t meet Smotrich and mentioned the IDF wouldn’t reply to him or the far-right nationwide safety minister, Itamar Ben Gvir.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich provides a press convention on the Prime Minister’s Workplace in Jerusalem, on January 11, 2023. (Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)
Kohavi has additionally warned of reported plans to wrest management of the Border Police from the Israel Police and to put it underneath the direct management of Ben Gvir. The Border Police additionally operates within the West Financial institution, underneath IDF’s operational purview.
“We can’t enable there to be two armies, with totally different procedures or totally different conceptions,” he instructed Channel 12 information.
If such a state of affairs had been to happen, Kohavi added, to stop two separate chains of command, the navy would possibly must swap out Border Police forces with “troopers from the standing military — who will consequently have much less time for coaching — or with reservists, who already carry a heavy sufficient burden.”
Ben Gvir has additionally known as to loosen up the IDF’s open-fire guidelines and to move laws granting police and troopers immunity from legal prosecution for any motion they could take whereas on operational obligation.
“Individuals who assume aggressive open-fire guidelines are the recipe for safety are mistaken. It could produce absolutely the reverse,” Kohavi mentioned in his current interview.
Nationwide Safety Minister Itamar Ben Gvir arrives for a cupboard assembly on the Prime Minister’s Workplace in Jerusalem on December 29, 2022. ( Ohad Zwigenberg/Pool/Flash90)
Additionally underneath the coalition agreements between Netanyahu’s Likud and Spiritual Zionism, the incoming authorities plans to advance a invoice geared toward shifting management of the workplace of the navy’s chief rabbi from the IDF to the Chief Rabbinate of Israel.
The invoice would give the Chief Rabbinate management over the appointment course of for the IDF chief rabbi. Presently, the IDF chief rabbi, a brigadier common, is appointed by the IDF chief of workers.
One other member of Netanyahu’s coalition, Avi Maoz, the top of the far-right homophobic Noam occasion, has additionally known as to shutter a military unit answerable for selling equal alternatives for girls within the navy.
The Yohalam Unit — a Hebrew acronym for the Gender Adviser to the Chief of the Normal Employees’s Unit — can be tasked with implementing insurance policies to stop sexual harassment within the military.
With Halevi, the IDF can be getting a brand new chief spokesperson. The outgoing one, Brig. Gen. Ran Kochav, got here underneath fireplace from right-wing officers who branded him and his unit as left-wing throughout his tenure.
IDF Southern Command chief Maj. Gen. Herzi Halevi in an undated {photograph}. (Israel Protection Forces)
The brand new IDF spokesperson, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, a senior Navy officer, was nominated by Halevi for the place, and, shortly after, authorized by Gallant. Each Hagari and Gallant served as commanders of the Navy’s elite Shayetet 13 unit, which might herald good relations between them.
The political challenges for the IDF come as violence has been rising within the West Financial institution throughout an Israeli anti-terror offensive to cope with a collection of Palestinian assaults that killed 31 individuals in 2022.
The IDF’s operation has netted greater than 2,500 arrests in near-nightly raids. It additionally left greater than 170 Palestinians useless in 2022, and one other 13 because the starting of this 12 months, lots of them whereas finishing up assaults or throughout clashes with safety forces, although some had been uninvolved civilians.
Most of the new political challenges are immediately associated to the way in which the IDF operates within the West Financial institution, from Smotrich assuming authority over COGAT to Ben Gvir’s plans to take management of the Border Police.
In his 2013 interview with The New York Instances, Halevi cited Plato, Socrates, and Maimonides as philosophers “that spoke about easy methods to steadiness, easy methods to prioritize ideas in a proper method — that is one thing that I discover very useful.”
Halevi will want all the assistance he can get, as he and the IDF navigate by the approaching political minefield.
