Almost everyone I have spoken to in recent days about the Elazar Stern affair, and no matter what political side he is from, has repeated one word - arrogance.
This seems to be the significant impression that the Minister of Intelligence left on those who met him.
One even told me that a few years ago he met with him for a briefing in his office in the Knesset, and Stern sat the whole conversation with his feet on the table.
And the central part of Stern's arrogance was of course his mouth.
The one who never knew how to keep quiet.
A quick Google search brings up quite a few of his statements that have caused storms in the past.
Elazar Stern to Miri Regev: "I do not want to talk here about how you have progressed in the army", November 2018 // Photo: Knesset Channel
When he was the head of the IDF, he caused a stir when he said in an interview with Gali Tzahal about the percentage of conscription among Tel Aviv residents that "I see which houses I go to and with all the pain with all the pride, I also look at which houses I do not go to, and these things are unequivocal - "In these houses there is no bereavement. Because there is no bereavement and there will be no bereavement."
Even in the Knesset, he did not stop expressing himself in an extreme way and provoking storms.
The most memorable case was, of course, the merger of former Minister Miri Regev on the Knesset podium when he called out to her, "I know how you have progressed in the army."
In 2017, he caused the then MK Shuli Mualem to burst into tears in the plenum when he accused her of sacrificing IDF soldiers, against the background of the fact that Mualem is the widow of the late Lt. Col. Moshe Mualem who fell in the helicopter disaster. To clarify his words he said that he has no intention of apologizing.
The most serious incident regarding Stern happened when he was the head of the IDF. The days were post-disengagement days, IDF soldier Hananel Dayan was elected one of the president's outstanding.
At the Independence Day ceremony, he asked not to shake the hand of the person he saw as the chief of deportation, Lt. Col. Dan Halutz.
Star rage.
He summoned Dayan for a reprimand call in his office and, according to Dayan, for long minutes spoke out in condemnation of the rabbis who allegedly sent him to the army.
But General Stern was not satisfied with a reprimand.
He passed the tape of the conversation to one journalist, Yair Lapid by name, as well as personal details from Dayan's file, including details about his parents' divorce and the illness from which his father suffered.
Following the case, Stern was reprimanded by the chief of staff and even ordered to pay compensation to Dayan.
The collaboration goes back a long way.
Yair Lapid and Elazar Stern in the Knesset, Photo: Oren Ben Hakon (Archive)
Stern's wild behavior towards Dayan is exactly the same condescending conduct of grinding complaints about which he spoke this week with typical arrogance on the radio.
Both cases are due to contempt for the common soldier.
From the one at the bottom of the food chain.
The soldier who gathers courage and turns to the senior officer to deal with the injustices done to them, expects a sympathetic ear.
They are probably waiting to hear if the person who hurt them will be treated or at least if the issue is investigated.
Instead, "the shredder worked overtime," Stern said.
She versioned the complaints, she also versioned the soldiers.
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