Brigadier General Roman Goffman, a fierce warrior who was critically injured in the defense of the Negev against the Hamas invaders on October 7, 2024, is expected to take over shortly the post of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s military secretary, this week distributed a document to all the decision-makers in the country’s military establishment, endorsing continued Israeli control over the Gaza Strip after the victory.
The document was not received well, since it contradicts the views of the security brass as well as the official Israeli government’s position and that of the IDF, explicitly pledging they don’t wish to govern the lives of millions of Arabs in Gaza indefinitely, and that at the end of the war, they would transfer control to another party (which is yet to determined). Even PM Netanyahu, who said the IDF would remain in Gaza until things settled down there, did not speak of a continued long-term Israeli rule.
Goffman believes Israel should establish a military government in the Gaza Strip. Now, both he and the IDF have insisted that the document only expressed the new military secretary’s point of view, and Goffman also denied allegations that he was expressing his new boss’s opinion – but with the Rafah operation around the corner and the possible ending of the occupation part of the war in six weeks, to be followed by clearing operations to extinguish remaining terrorists’ nests, it’s important to know that Israel will not allow anyone else to run things in the Strip.
Goffman (46), married and the father of three, is one of those rare IDF officers who speak truth to power. In 2018, as commander of the 7th Armored Brigade, he took the stage during an assembly of the IDF high command in the south, in the presence of then-Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, and spoke directly to Eisenkot, saying, “Chief of Staff, first I wanted to tell you that we are ready to fight. There is one problem. You don’t activate us. Over time, there has been a very problematic pattern that is developing here, mainly avoiding the use of ground forces.”
Eisenkot was one of the architects of the near-halving of the IDF and nearly eliminating the armored corps, pushing instead a “small and slim army” that relied on massive air power and technology. Eisenkot believed Hamas was deterred by Israel’s obvious military advantage and would not dare take action against it. In other words, Eisenkot, alongside his predecessor, Benny Katz, was the father of the Conceptzia that gave Israel the October 7 attack.
It is refreshing to find out that Netanyahu has decided to pull away from those failed military leaders and install someone who would challenge them every day.
