Pollard: Eisenkot’s flawed security doctrine is a recipe for another October 7

Eisenkot’s record of weakening Israel’s ground forces, embracing restrictive rules of engagement and favoring withdrawals and international arrangements reveals a security worldview Israel can no longer afford.

By Jonathan Pollard

As Israel fights an existential war across multiple fronts, leadership is no longer a matter of political preference – it is a binary choice between absolute victory and national collapse. While the public is fed a carefully manicured image of Gadi Eisenkot as a sober, responsible defense authority, the reality is far more alarming.

From the deliberate hollowing out of our ground forces to his current strategic positions, Eisenkot’s worldview represents the worst of the failed security concepts that brought us to October 7th.

Worse still, his recent entry into a political alliance with the radical left and his obstinate devotion to legalistic progressive rules of engagement expose a fatal truth: an Eisenkot premiership would not lead Israel to victory. It would shackle the IDF, surrender our strategic depth, and capitulate under the slightest pressure from Washington and Brussels.

The Architect of Unreadiness and Shackled Soldiers

The catastrophic failures of October 7th did not happen by chance; they were the logical conclusion of the exact military doctrine Eisenkot pioneered. As chief of staff, Eisenkot was personally responsible for slashing the IDF’s manpower and severely cutting its ground maneuver capabilities.

He championed a smaller, tech-reliant military that traded raw combat power for high-tech illusions. When Israel suddenly required a massive immediate ground force to fight a multi-front war, the structural defects he engineered were painfully laid bare.

Yet, while Eizenkot aggressively berates others for failing to take responsibility for the failures that led to October 7, he refuses to acknowledge how his own pre-war policies crippled the military’s capacity to decisively crush Hamas and Hezbollah.

This failure of doctrine is matched by his unyielding defense of progressive rules of engagement and the outdated “purity of arms” manual. In a Middle East defined by brutal asymmetric warfare, Eizenkot has consistently championed a hyper-legalistic framework that puts our soldiers at risk and actively prevents decisive military outcomes.

Instead of fighting to win, his doctrine prioritizes containing conflict and managing risks according to international law concepts. By subordinating the goal of absolute victory to progressive legal norms, his philosophy effectively ties the hands of IDF commanders on the front lines, turning a powerful army into a tool for managed retreats.

A Coalition of Contempt: The Alliance with Yair Golan

Nowhere is Eisenkot’s threat to national security more evident than in his formal agreement to form a coalition government with Yair Golan, the leader of the Democrats party. Golan is one of the most destructive and polarizing figures in modern Israeli history.

This is a man who infamously smeared our pioneer settler communities as “subhumans”, and has repeatedly leveled toxic, defamatory accusations against the IDF regarding its operations.

By locking arms with Golan in an opposition “change bloc” designed to seize power, Eisenkot has validated a radical fringe that views Israel’s own citizens and front-line protectors as the enemy. This alliance is not a mere political compromise. It is an ideological alignment.

An Eisenkot-Golan government would actively alienate the very communities providing the backbone of our combat forces, injecting severe domestic fractures into the heart of the security cabinet at a time when total unity is required.

Surrendering Gaza and Judea and Samaria

Eisenkot’s vision for the day after the war reads like a blueprint for Israel’s next disaster. Throughout the current conflict, he has consistently prioritized international diplomatic arrangements over the absolute destruction of Hamas, operating under the defeatist premise that the terrorist movement cannot be conventionally destroyed.

His proposal to rebuild Gaza under international supervision while withdrawing the IDF from the Strip is an exercise in dangerous naivety. A military withdrawal creates an immediate vacuum.

Without an active permanent IDF presence on the ground to conduct daily counter-terror operations, Hamas will simply be free to rebuild its forces, re-arm through open borders, and launch its next mass invasion.

His plans for Judea and Samaria are equally catastrophic.

-Propping up a hostile PA: While paying lip service to opposing a Palestinian state, Eisenkot demands that Israel do everything possible to preserve the Palestinian Authority. He chooses to ignore the PA’s flagrant violations of the Oslo Accords, its institutional incitement, and its aberrant “pay-for-slay” policy that funds the murder of Israeli citizens.

-Allowing a flood of Palestinian workers to enter Israel: In recent comments to the media, Eisenkot has indicated that he favors allowing more Palestinians to enter the Israeli job market. While he conditions their entry on “rigorous” background security checks, he seems totally oblivious to the dangers of allowing people who favor seeing another, even bigger, October 7 type massacre occur, to enter our most populous cities. As far as Eisenkot is concerned, though, keeping the PA financially afloat is more important than guaranteeing the security of our schools and malls.

-Caving on Strategic Land: He is fiercely opposed to building in the critical E1 corridor and refuses to support any additional settlement growth in Area C. His policy explicitly favors freezing Israeli strategic depth solely to avoid angering the international community, practically ensuring the creation of a contiguous hostile Palestinian territory right on our narrow border. Credible reports also indicate that as Chief-of-Staff, Eisenkot even went so far as to advocate ceding additional land in Samaria to the PA.

Cowardice via Evasiveness on the Global Stage

Perhaps the most telling indictment of Eisenkot’s fitness to lead is his calculated cowardly evasiveness on the most critical challenges facing the state.

He has remained completely silent on what Israel’s definitive objectives in Lebanon must be, said nothing regarding our policy toward the Druze community in Sweida, and has offered zero strategy on how to confront the head of the snake in Iran.

Most dangerously, this silence extends to his complete refusal to explain how he would stand up to intense pressure from the United States and the European Union.

At a moment when Israel faces relentless international demands to halt military operations, accept premature ceasefires, and make sweeping concessions to the PA, Eisenkot’s calculated silence is a screaming red flag.

It signals to our allies and enemies alike that he lacks the spine to say “no” to the West. A leader who hides his foreign policy in the shadows is a leader who will quietly cave the moment the White House or Brussels demands that Israel compromise on its own survival.

Ignoring and Burying Inconvenient Reports

What should really concern people who are rightly demanding a commission of inquiry over what, exactly, occurred in the run-up to October 7, is what Major General (rtd.) Yitzhak Brik had to say about Eisenkot’s propensity to cover up serious problems in the army.

During his time as the Soldiers’ Complaints Commissioner, Brik published a report on the readiness of our ground forces. Brik has publicly accused Eisenkot of doing “everything possible” to hide it from the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, the State Comptroller, and the Cabinet.

According to Brik, ignoring this report contributed directly to the army’s unpreparedness for Hamas’ October 7 invasion.

Brik also claims that he holds an archive of testimonies from hundreds of officers describing a dire situation in the army that existed during Eisenkot’s term as Chief-of-Staff. Brik indicated that if the public read them, “they would be horrified”.

Assuming Eisenkot became Prime Minister, can we be sure that he wouldn’t do everything he could to suppress these embarrassing reports? This possibility alone should convince people not to vote for Eisenkot’s party.

Conclusion

Israel is out of time for leaders who view national defense as a series of managed concessions and legalistic restraints. Gadi Eisenkot’s record is clear. He structurally weakened our military, champions rules of engagement that deny victory, and has allied himself with radical figures who despise our front-line communities.

Combined with his eagerness to surrender land and his total submissiveness to international opinion, Eisenkot does not represent security. He represents an existential threat to the state of Israel.

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