1.
In the days before the high priest entered the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur, the elders of the court and his fellow priests would prepare him for the day's service: "See before whom you enter – a place of fire, flame, and blaze. Our congregation relies on you, and our forgiveness shall be through your hands." They would recite this to him until it became second nature, and when the anticipated day arrived, he knew clearly how to proceed.
Almost two thousand years have passed since then. I thought about these ancient customs in the two weeks since Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir was appointed as the 24th Chief of the General Staff of the IDF. His skills as a commander, his fighting spirit, and his ideas for renewing the General Staff are things he presumably honed in the years since he left the IDF, and more intensely since the beginning of the current campaign. But the fire and flames ignited upon his entry into the position are probably less familiar to him.
2.
Indeed, our new chief of staff barely had time to open his office door in the Kirya before the well-known community of complainers descended upon him with accusations and attacks. The moderate among them hinted that he is a "good fellow" and they are confident he will know what to do, while the worst among them hastened to label him with the derogatory nicknames ready for any officeholder who hasn't pledged allegiance in advance to the order of knights of the old establishment. This is due to what they consider his unbearable sin: he was appointed to his position by the antichrist of the barn-burners.
This is a known method. Roni Alsheikh spent 27 years in the Shin Bet, far from the public eye and the blinding spotlight. No one prepared him to deal with the tone-setters, opinion-makers, and public pressure. When he entered his role as police oommissioner, he was marked with all the suspicious titles: religious, settler, and mainly – Netanyahu's appointee. After several months of suffering at the hands of the community of complainers, he took on an advisor who clarified the arena for him: there is a holy ritual bath more sacred than the Ari's mikveh in Safed: the Netanyahu mikveh. Those who immerse in it receive rehabilitation and purification for all their sins and transgressions in the secret of the great and awesome holiness. Alsheikh understood and acted accordingly. The results were magnificent: at once his sins were forgiven, and he received kosher certification and such an intense media embrace that, unfortunately, his vertebrae dislocated.
3.
The insolent statements by former Shin Bet head Nadav Argaman about information he is keeping for the right moment against the prime minister (who appointed him to the position!) require a response. Argaman is not a philosopher or a thinker; he speaks in the name of democracy but expresses a totalitarian conception. This is in accordance with the codes of his social affiliation group, which is experiencing a threat to its hegemonic status at this historical time of changing of the guard at the centers of power.
Therefore, he – who was never elected – responds with a threat against the one whom the people chose for leadership. In doing so, he signals to current and future appointees that they must maintain loyalty not to the state but to his social order. We must not be impressed by these threats but act decisively to appoint a new Shin Bet head, to clarify the proper relationship in a democratic regime between elected officials and appointed officials.
4.
Friedrich Hegel spoke of a consciousness mechanism of the "master and slave." The master wants to maintain his status and therefore preserves the slave's status, while the slave develops over time a dependence on the approving gaze, the legitimacy-giving, of the master who grades his function according to his expectations of him. In known psychological terms, there is something of both the master and the slave in all of us, depending on where and when. It is important to understand this psychological trap, especially in public systems, "a place of fire, flame, and blaze," and to know that we do not live by the words of the knights of the old establishment.
That is why we must ask our friends who enter public office: alongside professional skills, the job requirements also include the ability to withstand media pressure as well as deep ideological and intellectual roots, ensuring a stable mental and conscious backbone that does not surrender to media or social manipulations. Chief of Staff Zamir, the people trust you. Forward to victory.
