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Wednesday, October 6, 2010     GET REAL

Orthodox Jew gets top Israeli military post in first

TEL AVIV — An Orthodox Jew has been named Israel's deputy military chief.

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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.

According to Israeli news reports, 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.


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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.

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 awaiting a plea bargain arrangement.

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.



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