It's on you, Chief of Staff

In all profile articles about the Chief of Staff, even the critical ones (which you don't even need one hand to count), he is described overall as a "good guy": honest, reliable, practical, someone who does not consider himself a "philosopher," but a military man to his core, who came to rehabilitate the army after the most serious failure in its history. It is no coincidence that his appointment was a consensus in a country where it is impossible to agree on whether it is day or night outside.

However, since then, Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir has failed at most of the junctions where he, of all people, should have told the truth to the public: from the refusal to utter the words "state commission of inquiry," through active participation in inflating the achievements of the two operations in Iran, to getting bogged down in the Lebanese mud. Only when it was required to conquer Gaza at the expense of the hostages' fate and on the verge of passing a law that would perpetuate draft discrimination for generations, did Zamir know well how to bring to light what the political echelon tried to hide and obfuscate.

The escalation in the West Bank presents Zamir with another moment where he must decide which side of history to stand on. After all, he knows exactly, or at least should know, what is happening in the territory where the IDF is supposedly the sovereign: what tectonic changes have taken place there by deliberate initiative, including political backing that ignores the moral, security, legal, and political consequences; what is the direct contribution of the revolution to the deterioration of the situation; and that this has nothing to do with "security," but with a plan designed to uproot any possibility of a political settlement, in a way that would make all claims of apartheid true as a fact, one that even Supreme Court Justice Alex Stein would not be able to ignore.

"Apartheid states should not exist," said Stein when explaining why accusing Israel of apartheid is not part of a "cultural debate." If what is said about Zamir is true, he can explain to the honorable judge that the road there is much shorter than he thinks. And if Zamir is indeed as honest as he is described, he should also admit the shameful way in which the army in general, and the Central Command in particular, allowed the rule of law to crumble in the sector to the point of becoming a dead letter.

He knows that the IDF Spokesperson's Unit barely issues statements about incidents of Jewish violence, and even in responses to queries, it employs all the capabilities of a "word laundry" to blur and distort the reality in which the lives of Palestinians become unbearable due to violence, property damage, and harassment (sorry, "hikes" that turn into "friction") intended to expel them from their lands. Zamir knows where the Jewish terror comes from, knows about the documented involvement or indifference of those in uniform in too many incidents, knows that the Prime Minister did not tell the truth when he pointed to only "150 youths" as responsible for the phenomenon, knows that the Command's commander is failing miserably in dealing with it, and knows that this did not stop Major General Avi Blot from pandering to the "Farm Union" and telling them that the project "connects well with the security concept," which the army apparently forgot to tell us all about.

Zamir also understands perfectly well who is served by a flare-up ahead of elections, the deadly combination of extremist ideology and boundless cynicism, and the central role of the IDF in fulfilling the wildest fantasies of a government under polling distress. And now the question is whether Zamir is even a quarter of what they say about him, or if he is David Zini with PR.