Until the end of last week, Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot were lazily napping.
The two former chiefs, who were shocked by the election results, gradually began to digest the fact that they would have to spend the next few days in exhausting discussions and tedious votes, as drab members of the Knesset in the opposition.
The goal to which it is right or desirable to direct the arrows was not clear to them either.
On the one hand Binyamin Netanyahu and the coalition being formed, and on the other hand Yair Lapid, the outgoing prime minister and the opposition opponent - and possibly also in general the most prominent opponent of the state camp.
Then came the Givati soldiers incident in Hebron, and as if gave them a shot of energy.
They are, as they say, in their element.
This is exactly their favorite and familiar political living space.
The headquarters of the state camp in the elections to the 25th Knesset, photo: Gideon Markovich
Gantz and Eisenkot.
The goal was not clear, photo: Oren Ben Hakon
Gantz and Eisenkot, as citizens of the state, understand that the videos that were distributed following provocations by activists who harass IDF soldiers are not the full story. There is also a connection. There is also quite a bit of exploitation. The incident in Hebron to violence in the streets. It is as if the soldier confronting in Hebron is infected with the same cultural disease that the abominable murderer from Holon is infected with. Some expressed this explicitly, while others only hinted: this is, apparently, what disintegration looks like. The violent, the extremists and the lawbreakers are getting a boost from the political forces that are about to enter the halls of power Everything somehow merged into the same narrative framework: everything was inspired by the new regime.
High boots on the carpet
Gantz, Eisenkot and other former security generals and officials, such as Bogi Ya'alon, Ram Ben Barak and others, each in turn added their own patch to the fabric.
On one side stand the representatives of statehood, the crystal beauty and purity.
The people of "good intentions", to use the phrase used by former Prime Minister Bennett, when he described his government in an article in the "New York Times". The forces of light, in short. From the second past, on the other hand, there are violent citizens plotting to destroy the army and the values of evil, The sacrifice and the "people's army" of the State of Israel, as we knew them.
In practice - the reality is the opposite.
The "high shoes" party, to use the phrase used by former Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon, is the one hurting the IDF, is the one eroding statehood and is the one eroding the status of the security establishment.
We have never seen the politicization of the army and the conversion of military capital into political capital - as we have seen here in the last two years.
Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot at the Chief of Staff exchange ceremony, 2015. No one doubts their military heroism, photo: Dodi Vakanin
Gantz, as Eisenkot, jumped as a source of great spoils for a mistake made by a soldier in an operational situation, and accused others of bringing the IDF into the political cauldron. "Fears for the existence of the IDF as the people's army" and links everything to his political opponents who are accused of incitement?
From now on, every soldier knows - who are the politicians who should not be trusted or whose authority should not be recognized.
Eisenkot also issued apocalyptic statements.
"The behavior of the future coalition undermines the authority of command in the IDF, harms public trust and may lead to the disbanding of the army," he claimed in a speech from the stage of the Israel Democracy Institute, the home ground of the state camp. Netanyahu will harm the national interest. And who determines what the national interest is? Certainly not the 64 mandates that elected him and the bloc.
No one doubts the military heroism of Eisenkot, Gantz, Ashkenazi, Ya'alon, Mofaz and others.
No one disputes their many rights.
But military courage and civil-political courage are two separate universes.
The public signals to the commanders that the politicians had that it is not particularly interested in their civilian leadership, and may even shy away from it.
The public sees, for example, how the members of the military lobby in the government and the Knesset are mobilized to fearlessly fight for the budgetary pensions, and recognizes how in patronizing and condescending they despise the democratic election and see it as an ignorant crowd, and sometimes a nazi in the making.
According to Yair Golan, who was not sentenced to ten days of imprisonment for his slurs against civilians while wearing a uniform.
Gantz and Eisenkot.
Bringing the IDF into the political cauldron, photo: Oren Ben Hakon
The public also saw how, in a panic, the political elite insisted on transferring the appointment to the Chief of Staff of Major General Herzi Halevi, who is worthy in his own right, during a transitional government. Along the way, every proper procedure was violated, with the appointment of Meni Mazuz to the committee for appointing senior officials. It is surprising that Kochavi and Levy themselves did not request From the political level to wait with the final appointment until the political situation is clarified.
And the public appreciates and cherishes its officers as long as they are in uniform - and don't try to send orders to them in suits.
The public also sees the ideological duplication, the uniformity of thought and the weak understanding of democracy, on the part of those who spent most of their formative years and mature lives in a non-civil framework.
The left likes to embrace Herzl's vision that the rabbis should stay in the synagogues.
Sometimes we forget about them the part where he filled in that the officers would also stay in the tent, as a basis for a healthy and functioning democracy.
The political officers are causing an erosion in the status of the army, in fact the increasing identification between the military elite and a very specific political wing - and because in the current state of affairs it is no longer possible to know if the senior Israeli officers are acting with the accumulation of political capital in mind for the day when they take off their uniforms.
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