Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday approved Military Secretary Maj.-Gen. Roman Gofman as the next head of the Mossad.
The approval came after the vetting committee of former Supreme Court chief justice Asher Grunis approved Gofman, following months of delay due to certain prior controversies.
Gofman will replace David Barnea as the country’s top spy chief on June 2, after Barnea completes his five-year term, which started in 2021.
In December, The Jerusalem Post reported that there are many forces stacked against Gofman, but that there are also some strong winds in his sails.
From the Post’s interactions with him as an IDF officer and delving deeper into sources who know him, Barnea is more formidable than many realize. Gofman, who is 49 and moved to Israel from Belarus at the age of 14, was never supposed to be the chief of the Mossad.
Had he not been appointed, he may or may not have moved on from being Netanyahu’s military secretary to some other IDF General Staff role, depending on his relations with IDF Chief of Staff Lt-Gen. Eyal Zamir.
Zamir may have been suspicious of Gofman, as IDF chiefs sometimes are of a prime minister’s military secretary, in terms of how loyal they are to the defense or political establishment, and moved him to a non-promotion track.
However, military secretaries are often later promoted to more senior roles in cases where an IDF chief receives the prime minister’s support on another issue in return for enabling the promotion.
But all this is now irrelevant, as Gofman will be leaping up to head a global spy service juggernaut, which will essentially make him Zamir’s equal.
Incidentally, the Post understands that Gofman has Zamir’s full support, who – regardless of his relationship with Gofman while he worked for Netanyahu – reflects fondly on working with him in certain prior military roles.
Unlike with David Zini’s appointment as an outsider to head the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), there will be no legal processes to hold up Gofman’s appointment.
Some question Gofman’s qualifications (and in fact Zini had slightly more support in the Shin Bet than Gofman has in the Mossad), but no legal issues are in play.
There might or might not be a wave of Mossad official resignations in protest that one of their own – where “A” was the leading candidate – was not given the job.
It hurts A that he was not Barnea’s pick and that former senior Mossad officials have called him unqualified, the Post has learned.
But every Mossad chief appointed leads to resignations or firings, as there are always different wings of the Mossad, and each new leader has new priorities.
If some of the top-level Mossad officials resign or are fired, the second level is generally happy to take their place.
And A has become Mossad deputy chief, which could signal greater stability even when Gofman enters office.
So the real challenge will have nothing to do with politics. It will be answering this question: Can Gofman rise to learn rapidly enough how to lead an agency in which he has no background or experience?
Meir Dagan did it. He was an IDF major-general with no Mossad experience, like Gofman.
Dagan ended up leading the agency from 2002 to 2011 and was nicknamed Superman for some of his heroic leadership.
Danny Yatom was less successful. He was an IDF major-general with no Mossad experience, but was forced to resign after just two-and-a-half years into an average five-year term, when an assassination he planned went sideways.
The other six of the last eight Mossad directors since 1982 all came from the agency, including every chief since 2011.
So what are Gofman’s chances?
One thing that the Post can relay about Gofman is that, even among serious generals, he doesn’t smile much.
That is not because he is not ready to toss a biting or satirical comment toward someone who he views as deserving (see his famous rebuke as a middle management IDF officer of then-IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot in front of other officers for acting too passively versus Hamas in Gaza.)
But rather it speaks to his internal seriousness and 24-7 job focus.
He is 100% about security and does not have time for nonsense.
Despite those questioning his lack of a Mossad background, the Post found he has some notable supporters.
Ilan Malka eventually rose to the rank of IDF brigadier-general and then to deputy chief of the Israel Prisons Service.
But before those posts, in 2000, he commanded the Givati Brigade, including a young tank company commander named Gofman in the Netzarim area of Gaza.
In one instance, Malka has said that they faced a surprise attack, but that one of the big challenges was trying to track and find the Gaza invaders after they were already in Israeli territory.
He said that Gofman, who became a top boxer in Ashdod as an adolescent, rode at the lead of his tank unit, found the invaders after only 20 minutes, overcame them, and took over their position almost single-handedly, as well as keeping up tank fire against any additional threats afterward.
If there is any question about whether Gofman has lost his fearlessness and become detached from what is really going on in the field due to recent years in higher command positions, one needs to only watch the short video of his charging into battle with Hamas on October 7, 2023, with no backup.
When Gofman was wounded in the leg, he became the highest-ranked wounded officer of the war, at the rank of brigadier-general at the time.
Sometimes, having that cache as someone who has taken risks in battle, like the Mossad agents he will be sending into danger, can build a deep sense of organizational loyalty that translates into higher results.
Malka describes Gofman as thoughtful, brave, clear, highly professional, and as someone who doesn’t hesitate to act in a crisis just because he has not yet received orders.
Gofman later became a colonel and brigade commander in the West Bank from 2015-2017, a period that included the intense Knife Intifada. So, October 7 was not his first challenging period in a position of authority.
During a speech that Gofman gave at Gush Etzion on Chanukah, another supporter of his, Yehuda Vlad (who is a senior Religious Zionist Party official), said that he spoke not only about the military’s successes but also its failures.
Gofman said that how to rise and learn from failures was one of the key sources of strength of Israel’s defense establishment.
He spoke about honoring the spirit of fallen Palmach major Daniel Mas, who rushed to reinforce the Gush Etzion bloc, which was under attack in 1948, despite being outnumbered. Gofman continued to discuss how the “internal light” of Mas, of Chanukah, and of the Jewish nation is the secret to returning strong after a defeat, even if the road to a comeback is long.
The Mossad is a brilliant agency, but it has many failures as well, and many missions that must be aborted or altered radically in real time.
A commander who is not afraid to look failure in the eye, and learn from it, may have a one-up on others who might be blinded to critical information by their own ego – something which took hold of much of the political and defense establishment on October 7.
Another supporter, IDF Lt.-Col. (res.) Tuvia Brukner has commented that a book Gofman wrote about warfighting while he was the commander of the 210th Division from 2020 to 2022 showed serious strategic and analytical thought.
Brukner also cited stories about the lengths that Gofman has gone to show sympathy for his fallen troops, including one with whom both he and Brukner served. This is once again a sign of a commander who knows how to build cohesion within a larger agency.
Multiple sources have told stories about Gofman coming to the Yeshiva of Eli in the West Bank, wearing no yarmulke, and though he is not formally religious, to study Jewish texts. He wanted to increase his commitment to the Jewish people, Jewish history, and to better connect with religious sectors of Israel, which he knew little of, coming from a secular Belarusian background.
Besides ingratiating himself with the religious Zionist sector, with which he grew up with little connection, this story shows his readiness to dig deep into new areas to reinvent himself with new tools and perspectives and to elevate his game.
This will not only be important generally in learning the role of a spy agency versus a military, but also because most indications are that his English is weaker than that of many of his recent predecessors.
While he is fluent in Russian, which will give him an advantage in dealing with Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he has already dealt with personally as Netanyahu’s military secretary, there are concerns that he has less of an understanding of the US and the West than his predecessors, going beyond the English language issue.
Supporters respond that as Netanyahu’s military secretary, he not only dealt with the Mossad, but with a wide variety of geopolitical issues, including those relating to the US and the West.
They acknowledge that he may need a translator in meetings with US and Western officials, which might usually have taken place with no one else present, but many countries’ spy chiefs have conducted their global clandestine relations with other spy chiefs with a translator present.
There have been allegations that Gofman is too close to the prime minister and to his wife, Sara Netanyahu.
Whether the allegations are true or not, we will see soon if the issue impacts his performance.
But it is worth noting that the same allegations were made about Yossi Cohen, who is now considered one of the most successful Mossad chiefs.
It is important to recall that the Mossad answers directly to the prime minister, unlike the IDF, which is in some ways its own entity. So, having stronger backing from the prime minister, provided the Mossad director is qualified, can be a boon to the agency in terms of having greater financial backing and readiness to approve new initiatives and daring operations.
Some critics have said that Malka’s complement of Gofman, that he acts rapidly even without waiting to receive orders at times, could be a significant negative as Mossad chief.
A spymaster must play a long-term game of three-dimensional chess to ascertain what the right move is at any specific moment, and being overly spontaneous can lead to disaster. Sacrificing an intelligence source for a quick, short-term win is often not the right move.
These critics note that Gofman received a censure from the military for his management of a psychological warfare operation when he was the 210th Division commander, in which he problematically authorized a minor to act as an undercover agent, including leaking certain items to hostile actors.
No one views Gofman’s role in that operation positively, but there are shades of grey.
Supporters retort that Gofman’s decisive action does not mean he does not consider his options, noting again that he was exposed to the wider world of complex geopolitics as Netanyahu’s military secretary.
Further, they would add that some spy chiefs have failed when they analyzed an issue for too long and lost a key window of opportunity to act.
A number of Mossad and CIA chiefs have told the Post that sometimes the only way to succeed in a broader, more difficult mission is to try several daring moves, only some of which succeed.
If this is what Gofman was trying to do as the 210th Division commander, and if he learned from the experience, maybe he will have grown in his sophistication by the time he takes the Mossad director’s chair.
In the end, what Gofman has going for him is a strong military record, emphatic support from the prime minister, and evidence that he has ample amounts of daring and creative talent to achieve some successes.
Whether those pluses are enough for him to overcome his lack of Mossad organizational background, less experience in the global spy field, weaker English, less experience managing an organization of this size, and a possible tendency to act too spontaneously will start playing out in June when he takes over.
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