MK Tally Gotliv (Likud) called for the firing of IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir on Tuesday over the warning letter he sent about a severe shortage of 17,000 soldiers in the IDF.
“Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir, I suggest you know your place!! Know your place!!” she wrote in a post on X/Twitter. “I am of course not threatening, because I have no authority in my hands. But your disgraceful letter from yesterday requires your dismissal.”
She added, “You dared to step onto the political field and, in doing so, weaken the morale of our soldiers and the citizens of Israel, like the last opposition MK. I would fire you without hesitation. The sooner, the better.”
MK Osher Shekalim (Likud) also sharply attacked the chief of staff. In an interview with 103FM on Tuesday, Shekalim argued that Zamir’s involvement in the issue of the draft law went beyond his authority and, in his view, harmed proper administration.
“The chief of staff should be the number one soldier and nothing else,” Shekalim said. “He is not supposed to be a lawmaker, and he is not supposed to set policy. He can say his piece to the prime minister behind closed doors and not take it outside. He got very confused, and it is a shame that he said it. This is part of the things we need to fix to restore proper administration.”
IDF chief of staff should be removed from position, MK says
When asked whether the chief of staff should be removed from his post because of the letter, the MK responded firmly: “When the chief of staff speaks like that and attacks lawmakers, in my view he cannot continue in his position. I am not saying that in this case, but in proper administration that is how it should have been. I have immense respect for Eyal Zamir for everything he does, but with all due respect, we have gotten a bit confused.”
“More than ever, we need to learn the lesson of October 7: that the army should deal with being an army. I want Zamir to come and tell me how many terrorists he knows how to eliminate according to the political echelon’s plans, and nothing else. I do not want him dealing with policy, implications and the scepters of values,” Shekalim added.
When asked whether the government is ignoring the chief of staff’s warning out of a desire to preserve its political survival, Shekalim rejected the claim outright. “Nonsense. What political survival? The Knesset is dissolving. I agree with him that we need soldiers and we are working exactly for that,” he said.
“I support everyone enlisting, and I am working for equality, but I want us to do it by agreement and with love. I want to embrace our haredi [ultra-Orthodox] brothers and not reject them.”
According to him, the army’s conduct reflects a broader structural problem. “This confusion led to the events of October 7, when the command echelon thought it was running the country. When the status of elected officials drops in the eyes of the executive echelon, it has consequences. We saw that information was hidden from the political echelon and that they are trying to educate us. I want there to be order here, that if he has comments for the political echelon, he knows how to do it behind closed doors and not take it to the media.”
Shekalim supports Netanyahu on need to refresh Likud list
Later in the interview, Shekalim addressed the clash between MK David Bitan and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the issue of entrenchments on the party’s list. “I support backing the prime minister on the need to refresh the list,” he said.
At the same time, he criticized the scope of the planned entrenchments. “There is a matter of proportions. I oppose the original demand that spoke about 10 or 11 entrenchments, and even what was settled now with eight changes,” he said. “There are many hardworking MKs.”
Speaking about his last Knesset term, Shekalim said, “I am considered one of the prime minister’s confidants, and we did amazing work that does not always reach the media. I submitted about 50 bills, of which four were enacted into law. With all due respect to all kinds of stars and glamorous people, I want, in the end, for the elected officials to be attentive to the public and come from it, not for some star to come who will not give a return.”
Source:
www.jpost.com
