IDF Stunned To Discover Producing Generals-Turned-Politicians Not Core Mission

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” retorted Gantz, who heads the party with the best chance of unseating Netanyahu this April 9.

Tel Aviv, February 28 – Israeli military officials expressed shock and confusion today upon realizing their organization’s main task does not entail grooming its senior officers to pursue elected office after retirement from service.

Generals and colonels who have spent the last several decades of their careers preparing one another to enter politics following their discharge found this week that nowhere in the Israel Defense Force’s literature or defining documentation does such an activity occur. The veteran commanders voiced a combination of bewilderment and dismay at the revelation, some of which found its way to reporters.

“I could have sworn that’s just what we did,” admitted a brigadier general who disclosed he had decided years ago to vie for a position in the Labor Party primary after retirement from the IDF. “Not that I’m reconsidering my plan, but it’s surprising, to say the least, that our entire organizational culture has centered around something that isn’t actually a thing. I mean, I know protecting Jewish sovereignty isn’t our core mission – the last couple of weeks, not to mention years, on the Temple Mount demonstrate that – but this was just kind of assumed. Go figure.”

The default assumption guiding departing senior officers – that political parties serve as their next natural home in public life – has led to a streak of former IDF Chiefs of Staff entering politics: Moshe Yaalon, Gabi Ashkenazi, and Benny Gantz most recently, following the precedents of Yitzhak Rabin, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Barak, Yitzhak Mordechai, Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, and Moshe Dayan, in addition to generals who served on the General staff but never led it, such as Yoav Galant, and others with solid military credentials, such as current Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Each of those personalities still living shared the confusion of the current IDF commanders regarding the organization’s mission.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” retorted Gantz, who heads the party with the best chance of unseating Netanyahu this April 9. “I spent my military career preparing to enter politics and now you tell me that’s not what I was supposed to focus on? Hmm. Well, that does call into question some of my decisions regarding Gaza, I guess.”

“We’re going to have to remedy that oversight,” asserted Barak. “We need to enact a law that makes this decades-old orientation explicit policy. How else are we going to prepare he next generation of soldiers to assume their military experience trumps everyone else’s expertise?”

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