The past as prologue: The Galant affair

was arrested by the police as the main suspect in producing the forged document.

— On 30 August General Ashkenazi, in a meeting of the IDF general staff, admitted that he had received the document at the end of April — more than three months before it became public.

— On 2 September, Barak spoke to the general staff, saying: “I’m worried about the attempt by serving and retired officers to stop and delay the process of appointing the next chief of staff, and to influence the results of the process in an illegitimate manner. The effort almost succeeded.”

— On 5 September the government approved Barka’s recommendation to appoint Galant as Ashkenazi’s successor.

— When the government, on 5 September, approved Galant’s candidacy to replace Ashkenazi, he was already facing another problem: a legal challenge, launched a few weeks earlier, over his use of public lands near his home in Amikam. The Green Movement, which launched the challenge, would not say how they learned of Galant’s real estate problems.

— On 1 February 2011, the legal adviser to the government submitted the findings of his investigation into Galant’s land issue to the government. The adviser, Yehuda Weinstein, harshly criticized Galant for his conduct.

— Later that evening, Barak and Netanyahu announced that Galnat’s appointment was cancelled.

— On 14 February, Ganz was sworn in as Ashkenazi’s replacement.

The police and the government’s auditor are still investigating the origins of the forged Galant document, and who was behind Harpaz’s forgery.

Pundits and commentators, though, have not waited for the results of these investigations to suggest — some more openly than others — that what Israel has experienced in the last four months was serious: it may not have been a putsch, but it was an effort by current and former military officers to prevent the elected leaders from choosing their preferred new chief of staff.

Commentators say that regardless of the motives of those who fought the Galant nomination, the fact that they would engage in such a brazen campaign was troubling.

We should wait for the investigation into the Galant document to conclude so we can see whether or not there was a Senator Fred Van Ackerman — or several Van Ackermans — in the higher echelons of the Israeli defense establishment.

It appears that we can now also wait — perhaps wait for a long time — before an Israeli military attack on Iran takes place. With Ganz at the helm, there will be someone in the decision making circles who, as was the case with Ashkenazi before him, would remind Barak and Netanyahu and other decision makers of the perils of a military action against Iran.

Stay tuned.

Ben Frankel is editor of the Homeland Security NewsWire