The past as prologue: The Galant affair

on their side: the leading pragmatists — Ashkenazi, Yadlin, Diskin, and Dagan — were coming to the end of their tenure, offering Barak and Netanyahu the opportunity of replacing them with more hawkish individuals.

The linchpin of their strategy was the appointment of General Yoav Galant, a hawk’s hawk, as Ashkenazi’s successor.

It now appears that the more pragmatic elements in the upper echelons of Israel decided that they should do everything they could to prevent a repeat of the early 1980s: they knew first-hand of Barak’s and Netanyahu’s hawkish approach to Iran. The last thing the pragmatists wanted was to have these two hawks surrounded by even more hawks.

The most important goal in this strategy was to prevent Galant from succeeding Ashkenazi. The pragmatists supported the candidacy of General Benny Ganz — and, short of that, floated the idea of keeping Ashkenazi in office for one more year.

Barak and Netanyahu would have none of it. The result was the Galant affair.

Here are the main facts as we know them:

— In early August 2010, Defense Minister Ehud Barak announced he was beginning the examination of candidates for the position of chief of IDF, from which General Ashkenazi would retire on 14 February 2011.

— On 6 August, Israeli TV revealed the existence of a document, written on the letterhead of the PR firm of Eyal Arad, which contained a detailed strategy for promoting one candidate — Genera Yoav Galant —and tarnishing the reputation of the current chief, General Ashkenazi and one of the leading candidates to replace him, General Benny Ganz.

— Arad said that he had nothing to do with the document, and that it was forged. He pointed out that it was written on a letterhead — and using a logo — which his PR firms had stopped using a few years ago.

— Galant and Barak, too, said they had nothing to do with the strategy document. Both claimed that the purpose of the forged document was to paint the two of them as conniving manipulators who resorted to dirty tricks to secure Galant’s appointment.

— The police opened an investigation to find put who was behind the document, and the legal adviser to the government instructed the government to suspend the process of examining candidates to replace Ashkenazi..

— On 23 August, Lt. Col. (Ret.) Boaz Harpaz, a close family friend of Ashkenazi,