It is noteworthy that Eyal Zamir is a close ally of the Israeli Premier and has maintained a long-standing relationship with him.
The Israeli Army has a new chief of staff, who just so happens to be working as an ally of the current Prime Minister, seemingly doing his bidding.
Instead of focusing on defense, the new hawkish military chief is pursuing “total victory” and reportedly preparing for a multi-front conflict.
“You’re under attack by Hamas”, Eyal Zamir told Israeli Southern Command Maj. General Yaron Finkelman, reportedly catching him off guard and running an undeclared drill while visiting an army position near Gaza’s Beit Hanoun.
This stunt was pulled on the newly instated Israeli chief of staff’s first day in office, as he sought to make a point about the kind of military leader he will be.
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Born in the city of Umm al-Rashrash (Eilat), Zamir is one of the oldest chiefs of staffs to have held his current position, at 59 years old. He is also of Iraqi and Yemeni Jewish origins.
Having studied political science at Tel Aviv University, later earning a Master’s degree in the topic of “national security” from the University of Haifa, he was also educated in military academies.
After joining the Israeli military in 1984, soon choosing the Armoured Corps, Zamir was trained as a combat soldier and also took a tank operator course.
Over the years he would climb the ranks of the Israeli military to become a commander, leading troop formations in Second Intifada, the 2006 Lebanon war, as well as numerous Israeli assaults against the besieged Gaza Strip.
For some time, he even led the Israeli southern command that collapsed within hours of the Hamas-led October 7 attack in 2023.
Between 2018 and 2021, Zamir was even the deputy chief of staff for the Israeli military. Before his most recent appointment, however, he decided to work as the director general of the Israeli minister of defence between 2032 and 2025.
Additionally, he also served as military secretary to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
It is noteworthy that Eyal Zamir is a close ally of the Israeli Premier and has maintained a long-standing relationship with him.
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Interestingly, Netanyahu has managed to purge most of those who previously surrounded him and would criticise his tactics, instead bringing on board loyalists instead.
For example, the Israeli PM created such difficult circumstances for the former “War Cabinet”, forcing Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot to resign in frustration due to the emergency war government having to function in paralysis.
Netanyahu would later go on to drive out his defence minister Yoav Gallant, who had been challenging the PM’s decision making, replacing him with the loyalist former foreign minister Israel Katz. Even when it comes to the Israel negotiating team that Netanyahu has sent to Qatar and Egypt to indirectly communicate with Hamas, he decided to get rid of the previous negotiators and place his close aide Ron Dermer in that same position.
One of the first moves that the new chief of staff for the Israeli army made was to begin a wave of layoffs for generals. He just so happened to also fire Israel’s military spokesperson Daniel Hagari, who had been getting into frequent disagreements, sometimes publicly, with Israeli PM Netanyahu.
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Zamir is also someone who believes in the old school vision for the Israeli military, placing himself in opposition to the massive dependence of the occupying entity on technology, a strategy adopted in the early 1990s and was once called “a small and smart army” by former Israeli PM Ehud Barak.
Instead of relying on diplomacy and seeking to avoid war, Zamir is not only adamant about fighting Israel’s war aggressively, but has vowed to work with the political establishment to “make sure” that Hamas no longer exists in Gaza and that the war does not end with the ceasefire agreement.
Zamir’s appointment last Wednesday has been received to the great delight of Israel’s most extreme political factions, some of whom described his selection as a “dream”.
Meanwhile, Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich remarked that “the most important thing is for Zamir to remember that the professional echelon is subordinate to the political leadership. It’s time the military understands that.” According to the Israeli daily Haaretz, Netanyahu responded to Smotrich by telling him: “Not just the military – the entire professional echelon.”
(The Palestine Chronicle)
– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
