General Who Came in From the Cold

The journey for the promotion of General Galant and his transformation from one of the candidates for Israel’s Chief of Staff to the only possible candidate, to present him as a saint saved from the swamp of in-fighting and slander with his shining halo intact, reached its successful conclusion.

Even before the ink dried on the police report which exonerates the military generals from forging a document dubbed the Galant Document, the graduate of the Chief of Staff special unit, Defence Minister Ehud Barak, notified the graduate of the military special unit Netanyahu on the selection of a graduate of yet another commando to Israel’s next security triumvirate.

The affair seemingly began with the report of journalist Amnon Abramovitz on the Channel 2 evening news on Saturday 6 August, which is also the anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima in World War II. According to Abramovitz, a document was found that outlines how the path of General Yoav Galant will be paved to the Chief of Staff chair.  The document that was seemingly composed by a strategic consultant whose logo appeared on the document suggests  means of demonizing the images of military generals competing for the same position, all the while praising the qualities of General Galant.

The country was outraged. The strategic advisor complained to the police about the falsification of a document and was found to be telling the truth. The police devoted to investigation of the affair its top detectives and spared no resources. Within two weeks each of the major generals of the General Staff was cleared of forging the document, but the officers of the General Staff and the Israeli military generals were exposed as a nest of hornets stinging each other and prepared to pave their way up with the bodies of their colleagues. Caricatures in the newspapers portrayed them as a gang of vultures and residents of Sodom and Gomorrah, and Yoel Marcus in his column in Haaretz wrote that the heads of these snakes must be smashed.

During the investigation it also became apparent that the Chief of Staff himself received the document three months previously and did nothing, even though most of the major generals knew of its existence. Everyone reached the conclusion that the goal of the fictitious document was to harm the chances of Galant being chosen as the new Chief of Staff. In response, Defence Minister Barak acted with top speed and even before identifying the person responsible for the forgery he announced the appointment of Galant as the next Chief of Staff.

The primary commentator of this affair in Haaretz, Aluf Ben, came out with the headline “Putsch Attempt Failed”. Really? If so, why did all the players in this affair act according to the forged document? In the meantime it was determined that the prime suspect is a dismissed military officer named Boaz Harpaz who apparently passed the document to Chief of Staff Ashkenazi.

The entire affair, seemingly at its conclusion,is reminiscent of one of the well known stories of John le Carre, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. There, a poorly trained British spy was sent to falsely accuse the head of the East German Secret Service of being a double agent. He manages to convince the deputy of the head, who covets the job of his bos and believes the accusation, but the British agent breaks down and admits he was sent to slander the head. His breakdown was actually part of the plot of his superiors, of which the agent was unaware. If we compare this fictitious story to the Galant affair it appears that the forged document was truly transformed into a strategic plan and allowed Barak to rapidly appoint a candidate acceptable to him without a peep from the other candidates, thus replacing his enemy Ashkenazi in case he requires a Trojan horse during the anticipated failure of the direct negotiations with the Palestinians.

The sole person who raised doubts about the guilt of officer Boaz Harpaz is Amir Oren of Haaretz, who believes that Harpaz doesn't possess the qualifications necessar for composing such a complex document. In any case, if someone will now contend that a genius strategic advisor succeeded in promoting Major General Galant as the planned choice of Barak, no one will believe him anymore. Just like the spy who came in from the cold. The head of the East German Secret Service was indeed a British spy, but this contention was exposed (just as the British Secret Service planned from the beginning) as a British plot, such that no one believed it any longer.

Life continues to imitate literature.

Translated to English by the Alternative Information Center (AIC).