His immediate predecessor, Moshe Yaalon, a conservative and former military chief of staff who was pushed out, had staunchly backed the generals, who have spoken out against manifestations of extremism in the ranks and in broader society.
“Generally, the image of an army is that it wants to push forward and it has to be restrained sometimes by the politicians, statesmen who think in a wider context and know that they need to make compromises,” said Shlomo Avineri, a professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “In Israel, the present situation is almost the opposite.”
.. The fissure is not between the traditional Israeli right and left, he said, but between “strategic hawks,” or pragmatists who put Israel’s security first, and “ideological hawks” who are more concerned with historical rights and Jewish nationalism.
.. Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, the chief of staff of the Israeli military, recently caused a stir when he told an audience of high school students that he would not want a soldier to empty a magazine on a Palestinian girl of 13 holding a pair of scissors. He was attacked by rightist politicians who advocate a policy based on the Talmudic lesson “Whoever comes to slay you, slay him first.”
.. Then Maj. Gen. Yair Golan, the deputy chief of the military, caused an uproar in a speech for Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day this month, when he said he discerned disturbing trends in Israeli society that reminded him of processes that led to the rise of Nazi Germany.
Mr. Netanyahu rebuked General Golan, criticizing his remarks as outrageous
.. Military-civilian lines are further blurred in Israel by the number of retired generals who try to capitalize on their army prestige by entering politics.