Nadene Goldfoot
The current head of the IDF is Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, who holds the title of Chief of the General Staff. He assumed office on March 5, 2025, succeeding Herzi Halevi.
He's held his office for the past 9 months, so he's not that new. Zamir was born and raised in Eilat. He was one of three children born to Shlomo and Yaffa (nee Abadi) Zamir. His grandparents were immigrants from Yemen and Syria. His father was a Lieutenant Colonel in the IDF who decided to settle in Eilat after being stationed there.
Zamir is a graduate of the Inter-Service Command and Staff College, and the National Security College. He holds a bachelor's degree in political science from Tel Aviv University, a Master's degree in national security from the University of Haifa, and is an alumnus of the General Management Program for Senior Executives (GMP) of The Wharton School, where Trump attended.
David Zini is the current head (director) of the Shin Bet, Israel's domestic intelligence agency. He assumed office on October 5, 2025.
"Prime Minister Netanyahu announced this evening his decision to appoint Major General David Zini as the next head of the Shin Bet," the statement began."
“Maj.-Gen. Zini has served in many operational and command roles in the IDF, including: A fighter in the Sayeret Matkal (Netanyahu's well known unit being the hardest of all )(General Staff Reconnaissance Unit), commander of the 51st Battalion in the Golani Brigade, commander of the Egoz unit, commander of the Alexandroni Brigade, founder of the Commando Brigade, and commander of the Training and Doctrine Command as well as commander of the General Staff Corps,” the statement said.
David Zini is 51 years old (today) as of December 4, 2025. He was born on January 9, 1974, in Jerusalem, Israel. and will be 52 years old January 9, 2026. Zini is a retired Israel Defense Forces major general and has been serving as the head of the Shin Bet (Israel's domestic intelligence agency) since October 5, 2025.
The Shin Bet, Israel's internal security agency, is most comparable to the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) in the United States. Both agencies share a primary focus on internal security and counterintelligence within their respective countries. They also compare it to the British MI5. Shin Bet’s key missions are countering espionage, subversion, and sabotage; dealing with Jewish extremists, mainly on the West Bank; protecting individuals, such as the prime minister, and, in recent years, conducting cyber operations. Shin Bet’s director answers directly to the prime minister.
Before long, the organization started gathering intelligence, recruiting a network of collaborators – young and old, rich and poor – insinuating itself into all areas of Palestinian life, penetrating town and villages, exploiting religious rivalries, and also making extensive use of underworld figures.
Then how did they miss the October 7th 2023 attack? Israeli intelligence did detect some suspicious activity on Hamas militant networks before the attack, The New York Times reported on Oct. 10, 2023. But the warning wasn’t acted upon or fully understood in its entirety – similar to what happened in the United States shortly before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
Critically for his future success, Zamir was Netanyahu’s military secretary from 2012 to 2015, then leader of Israel’s southern command for the next three years until 2018. In his final year in the southern command, Zamir’s troops “confronted” Palestinian protesters from Gaza taking part in the Great March of Return on March 30, 2018. The 2018–2019 Gaza border protests, also known as the Great March of Return, were a series of demonstrations held each Friday in Gaza near the Gaza-Israel border from 30 March 2018 until 27 December 2019, in which Israel killed a total of 223 Palestinians. Wikipedia
“Intelligence analysis is like putting a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle together from individual pieces of intelligence every day and trying to make judgments for policymakers to actually do something with those insights,” said Javed Ali, a counterterrorism and intelligence scholar who spent years working in U.S. intelligence.
All three men, Netanyahu, Zamir and Zini developed their skills by serving in the Sayeret Matkal Unit. They speak and think the same language. This should bring out the best in all of them.
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