It’s time for Kochavi to tell the truth

Almost daily, some government official or IDF officer warns that Israel is on the brink of a massive war. On Tuesday, it was Maj.-Gen. Aharon Haliva’s turn. Head of the IDF’s Operations Directorate, Haliva said that warning of the threat from Iran is not fearmongering.

“All signs indicate that the next year has the potential to be negative from a security perspective,” he told a group of Treasury Ministry officials.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mentions Iran in almost every speech now. Speaking at a dinner Tuesday, he said that Israel will retaliate against Iranian aggression. “It seeks to destroy Israel,” he said. “We fight back.”

And then there was Michael Oren, Netanyahu’s former deputy minister and ambassador to the US, who published an article in The Atlantic this week with a doomsday scenario. In a future war with Iran, he warned, Israel will be “physically razed,” “bled economically” and paralyzed.

“Hospitals, many of them resorting to underground facilities, would quickly be overwhelmed, even before the skies darken with the toxic fumes of blazing chemical factories and oil refineries,” was one of the lines in his chilling and at times irrational column that made Israel appear to be weak and defenseless. In fact, the Jewish state has the strongest and most advanced military in the Middle East.

Nevertheless, all of the above sounds scary, and the constant beating of war drums has many people here joking about taking an extended vacation until the “situation” – as Israelis refer to it – calms down once again.

The problem is that while these warnings might all be right and genuine, they

also might be wrong and exaggerated.

The IDF is genuinely concerned that Iran will try to attack Israel the way it bombed the Aramco oil refinery in Saudi Arabia two months ago, with cruise missiles and killer drones. This has the defense establishment on edge, forced to consider not only how it will defend the country, but also how it will respond to such an attack.

Due to the ongoing political stalemate in Israel, though, it is impossible to know how real this threat is. When Netanyahu warns about Iran, that helps him create public pressure on Blue and White to enter a unity government while accepting his conditions. He has an interest to play threats up.

When Haliva meets with officials from the Finance Ministry’s Budget Department, it is also difficult to know what is true and what isn’t. The IDF is hoping to get an increased budget for the coming year. It wants to buy more planes and missile ships, and get a larger piece of the state budget pie. Convincing the country’s accountants and economists that their lives are in danger can only help.

For this reason, it is time IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi speak up publicly. Until now, he has stayed quiet and out of the spotlight. A few weeks ago, IDF Spokesman Brig.-Gen. Hidai Zilberman released a quote from Kochavi that all of Israel’s fronts are “fragile and could deteriorate.”

But that was it. Nothing about the nature of the threats, how urgent they are, and whether the politicians’ use of the security situation was sincere or not. A number of government officials have expressed disappointment with Kochavi and his silence.

“Due to the political situation, it might make sense for him to be quiet,” one veteran MK said this week. “But by not saying anything, he himself is playing politics and is effectively telling Israelis that he supports Netanyahu.”

But generals are not meant to be yes men. They don’t serve a politician. They serve the people whom they have sworn to protect. If they feel that something is being misused, they have an obligation to speak up.

Kochavi could take a lesson from his predecessor Gadi Eisenkot. In February 2016, Eisenkot gave a speech that turned into a watershed moment for his term, declaring: “There is no reason to empty a magazine into a 13-year-old girl with scissors.” It came a few weeks after an off-duty policeman shot and killed an Arab teenager who had stabbed an elderly man in Jerusalem with a pair of scissors.

At the time, right-wing politicians slammed Eisenkot. Israel was trying to stem a wave of Palestinian stabbings and ramming attacks, and here came the chief of staff with a statement that made it seem like he was restricting the IDF’s rules of engagement. When Elor Azaria shot an unarmed, neutralized Palestinian terrorist in Hebron a month later, Eisenkot again defied the politicians and stood his ground, making it clear that such an action was wrong.

Eisenkot was standing up for a moral imperative. He didn’t back down due to the political pressure and he didn’t apologize. He stuck to his principles, as generals are supposed to do.

After almost a year in his role, it is time for Kochavi to speak up and lay down his own moral guidelines. Israelis have a right to know what is really happening, and Kochavi is the one who needs to tell

them. •