Religious Jew Named Israeli Deputy CoS
TEL AVIV [MENL] -- For the first time, an Orthodox Jew has been named
Israel's deputy military chief.
Israel's media asserted that Defense Minister Ehud Barak has appointed
an observant Jew as the military's deputy chief of staff. The appointment,
which has not been announced, was identified as that of Yair Naveh, a
retired major general and former chief of Central Command.
"There will be an announcement very soon," an Israeli source said.
Naveh helped plan and execute Israel's expulsion of nearly 16,000 Jews
from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank in 2005. When he was rejected for
the post of Defense Ministry director-general, Naveh went to India where he
served as adviser to the government on how to clear squatter villages.
This marked the highest-level appointment of an Orthodox Jew in Israel's
military. Despite numerous Orthodox junior and mid-level officers, the
military has been regarded as a bastion of secularism and often excludes
religious Jews from top combat units, including the General Reconnaissance
Unit and the navy's Flotilla 13.
In early 2010, Naveh, the brother of a former senior Cabinet minister,
was identified as the commander of a soldier who transferred more than 2,000
classified documents to an Israeli journalist
and which later went missing. The soldier, Anat Kam, who worked in Naveh's
office, has been under house arrest as a plea bargain was being arranged.
The source said Barak approached Naveh, who resigned in 2007, to become
deputy chief of staff after two current officers rejected the offer. They
were identified as Maj. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, head of Northern Command, and
Maj. Gen. Avi Mizrahi, head of Central Command.
