Who Is Yoav Gallant, the Man Again at the Center of Israeli Politics?

While America was deciding on its new president, Israel was in the midst of a political turmoil of its own. There is a parliamentary fight about funding for haredi daycares that threatens the governing coalition and a scandal over leaked information from the prime minister’s office, and Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, who has served in the position since 2022. Netanyahu’s allies and opponents have different accounts of the reason for the dismissal of a figure who presided over the recent successes of the IDF but also—by his own admission—its failures on October 7, 2023. I doubt we’ll fully understand what happened until decades from now, when records of their private disputes become open to the public.