The terrifying reason Netanyahu fired his defense minister, as the war in Gaza and Lebanon rages

We’re days, maybe hours, before another attack by the Iranians, one that could be worse than the onslaught a month ago. We’re days, maybe hours, before senior officials at the Prime Minister’s Office are grilled in two cases involving security issues.

Against this backdrop, Benjamin Netanyahu chose to fire Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

This was a transparent (and admittedly successful) attempt to distract the media from its investigation into suspicions that minutes of meetings at the Prime Minister’s Office were falsified – meetings on security issues. The announcement of Gallant’s ouster was orchestrated for 7:55 P.M., five minutes before the evening news, because that’s what Netanyahu’s people do best: They dominate the television news.

• Netanyahu is a clear and present danger to Israel. Now defense chiefs face a dire dilemma
• Gallant is fourth defense minister to be fired or resign over disputes with Netanyahu
• Israeli hostage relatives: Gallant’s firing ‘another attempt by Netanyahu to block deal’

On Tuesday the connection between the latest developments was exposed – and it’s terrifying, to a degree we’ve never known. We didn’t know it, but for months Netanyahu has been up to his neck – again – in investigations. The first is the Shin Bet security service’s probe into the theft of a document and its leak to German tabloid Bild.

Even if Netanyahu didn’t know the exact details, it’s hard to imagine that he didn’t fear that at least his people would be investigated. Let’s not even get into the other possibility, the terrifying one: He not only knew but was the mastermind and prepared for an inquiry.

Then there’s the second investigation. In May, Avi Gil left his job as Netanyahu’s military secretary and complained to Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara about a serious crime, the falsification of minutes, after the war broke out on October 7, 2023. (Nadav Eyal first reported this in Yedioth Ahronoth the following July; the public forgot but Baharav-Miara did what she needed to do and sent the police into action.)

Over the weekend, for the first time in history (as journalist Guy Peleg reported Tuesday), police investigators visited the Prime Minister’s Office in order to investigate that office.

Under the radar, a detailed list of all of Bahara-Miara’s actions against the government was sent out to the toxic cogs of Netanyahu’s poison machine. Openly, there was a cabinet meeting in which Baharav-Miara’s role, the target of an ambush, was dictated in advance.

This wasn’t the usual kind of attack by Israel’s ministers, including the prime minister. It was a threat against Baharav-Miara because of the investigation into his office.

“She’s a contrarian, an enemy; deal with it,” Netanyahu ordered, as if he were a mafia don ordering his consigliere to “deal with” a prosecutor. The next day, news of this reached the public and Gallant was immediately fired.

Then the media was told that Gallant’s scalp was only the first and that everyone was a target now – the military chief of staff, the Shin Bet chief, the attorney general. It’s only a matter of time. (As usual, this was denied minutes after the statement was provided.)

Target No. 1: the army commander during a war who, with rare courage and integrity, has striven to defend the military against toxic political influences. Target No. 2: the head of the agency investigating alleged crime in the prime minister’s inner sanctum. Target No. 3: the courageous attorney general who ordered a probe into yet another stinking affair at the most lawless Prime Minister’s Office in the nation’s history.

This affair attests to the complete chaos in the most important place in the country, against the backdrop of the longest and most complex war in the country’s history. This is what a dictatorship looks like, so on Tuesday night, the demonstration on Tel Aviv’s Kaplan Street and elsewhere around the country quickly doubled in size, at least.

Feelings are running high. In a press release accompanying the letter dismissing Gallant, Netanyahu said: “I made attempts to bridge the gaps [with Gallant], but they kept getting wider. They also became known to the public in an unacceptable way, and worse, they became known to the enemy. Our enemies drew satisfaction and greatly benefited from this.”

In other words, it was Gallant who widened the gaps, leaked information against Netanyahu and played into the enemy’s hands. But oddly enough, Gallant and the people in his office aren’t being investigated by the police and the Shin Bet.

In March 2023, the last time Gallant was fired, it was because he warned of “a clear and present danger to the country’s security” if the government’s effort to weaken the judiciary continued. On Tuesday night, he was fired once again, partly because he thwarted Netanyahu’s plan to let ultra-Orthodox men evade the draft.

When during a war in which hundreds of soldiers have been killed and thousands wounded, Israel’s defense minister is fired for the benefit of a bunch of shirkers in a putrid political deal, it’s a direct blow to the country’s security.

But we’ve gotten used to this. We’ve gotten used to the insanity of a prime minister eroding the country’s security in 1,001 ways, like a spokesman who failed a security check and is now suspected of handling sensitive security matters, like the suspected falsifying of minutes in the first days of the war, like the prolonging of a war in Gaza that’s taking a heavy toll in blood nearly every day, like abandoning the hostages in Hamas’ tunnels as a second winter sets in.

Also, firing Gallant has been the Netanyahu family’s obsession for over a year now. Throughout the war, he has been the main enemy on the social media platforms operated by Yair Netanyahu and the other clones in the cult. Gallant has been targeted more than opposition leaders Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz – and more than bumped-off Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

It’s quite possible that Netanyahu timed the act in honor of his wife’s birthday. Maybe the only person Sara hates more than Gallant is Gideon Sa’ar, who now has been appointed foreign minister.

And as Sa’ar tweeted on that dramatic night of March 26 last year, when the first attempt to offload Gallant failed: “Netanyahu’s decision to fire the defense minister is an act of madness that reflects a total lack of good judgment. Netanyahu is determined to send Israel into the abyss. Every day he serves in his role endangers Israel and its future.”

Sa’ar sold his soul to the devil in exchange for the cushy foreign minister’s post. Even if he’s not part of the darker scenarios, it’s hard to see how he aligns with the political foundation of Gallant’s dismissal: offering a sacrifice to ultra-Orthodox leaders Yitzchak Goldknopf, Moshe Gafni and Arye Dery and replacing the hand that refused to sign off on the draft-dodging bills.

Gallant’s firm stance on the draft issue reflects a bit of courage in the governing coalition. It might just foil another sop for the ultra-Orthodox community, the so-called day care bill (already on its last legs) and similar legislation in the future.

Sa’ar’s silence is disgraceful. He has a hand in the corrupt deal in which Foreign Minister Israel Katz becomes defense minister and a law has been promised to exempt the ultra-Orthodox from the draft and save the coalition.

Netanyahu’s only real goal is to keep his messianic and racist coalition afloat until October 2026, by when an election must be held. He aims to reach this date after putting together the pieces for another judicial overhaul to secure his reelection.

That’s the aim; damn the hostages, the dead soldiers, the evacuees from the south and the north, the collapsing economy, the unraveling society, the crumbling international standing, and the celebrations in the Arab world over the firing of the defense minister who was a thorn in its side.

Amid Netanyahu’s corruption trial, dramatic security investigations into his office and troops dying in large numbers, Netanyahu fires the defense minister. This is what countless soldiers, including reservists, will have in mind when heading to battle.

Many of them feel that for nearly two years their country has been stolen and driven to collapse. Many of them may soon ask themselves: Who and what are we fighting for? Then they’ll act in accordance with their consciences.

The opposition leaders – Lapid and Gantz, Avigdor Lieberman and Yair Golan – held a press conference. The opposition leader who’s not in parliament, former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, broke his silence Tuesday and declared in a video statement: “We have an insane, sick leadership. Change is on the way.”

Now it’s time to turn words into action.