Moshe Kaplinsky

Moshe Kaplinsky was born in 1957 in Gedera and is married to Penina; the couple have two children.[1] He enlisted in the Golani Brigade in 1976 and was appointed commander of the Golani Reconnaissance Unit in 1982.[1]

During the First Lebanon War, Kaplinsky was wounded while commanding the Golani Reconnaissance Unit in the capture of the Beaufort fortress.[2] The reconnaissance commander Guni Harnik replaced the wounded Kaplinsky during the operation and was subsequently killed alongside five of his men.[3] Years later, reflecting on the site where he had been wounded, Kaplinsky said: "Beaufort is a piece of my life."[3]

He later completed an advanced infantry officers' course in the United States and earned a bachelor's degree in economics and business administration from Bar-Ilan University, as well as an executive MBA — completed with honors — from Tel Aviv University.[1]

Kaplinsky's rise through the IDF spanned three decades and encompassed command at every major level of ground forces. After commanding the Golani Reconnaissance Unit, he took charge of the Golani Brigade's Gideon Battalion in 1985.[1] He went on to command the Hermon territorial brigade in 1990, the eastern brigade on the Lebanon border in 1991, and the Golani Brigade itself in 1993.[1] He served as a field-formation division commander from 1997 and as commander of the Galilee Formation from 1999.[1]

From 2001 to 2002 he served as military secretary to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, becoming the first military secretary to be promoted to major general while holding that post.[4] He commanded the Galilee Division before that appointment and moved on to serve as head of Central Command in 2002.[4][1] As Central Command chief, he was involved in establishing the separation barrier in the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria.[2] Earlier, while commanding forces on the northern border, he helped manage Israel's May 2000 withdrawal from southern Lebanon and was subsequently responsible for establishing the IDF's northern-border defense system.[5]

Kaplinsky was appointed IDF Deputy Chief of Staff in 2005, serving under Chief of Staff Dan Halutz.[1] He remained in the post until the end of 2007, completing 32 years of military service.[6]

The 2006 Second Lebanon War placed Kaplinsky at the intersection of the IDF's most consequential operational and command decisions. In August 2006, Chief of Staff Halutz sent him to the northern border as his representative at Northern Command, tasked with coordinating matters related to the fighting and serving as a close aide to Northern Command chief Udi Adam.[5] Ynet characterized this appointment as an attempt to circumvent Adam's authority, a description that reflects how the posting was received within parts of the military.[7]

On July 17, 2006, Kaplinsky expressed confidence that Hezbollah would be weakened enough to stop firing rockets into Israel.[8] A BESA Center analysis later placed this assessment among the senior military leadership's broader confidence that air power could overcome the rocket campaign — a view the analysis noted was not shared by leading Israeli experts — and concluded that the rocket attacks continued throughout the war.[8]

At a conference marking the war's third anniversary, Kaplinsky offered a frank accounting of the failures he believed required examination: the absence of clear operational goals, commanders failing to convey to government, the public, and the army itself that Israel was at war rather than continuing West Bank operations, the failure to call up reserves immediately, and operational procedures and orders he said had not changed in six years.[7] He also cited the Northern Command's sectoring, insufficient initiative and persistence in mission execution, and the fact that a home-front state of emergency was not declared until the fighting was nearly over.[7]

Kaplinsky used a vivid anecdote from the 1973 Yom Kippur War to illustrate the difficulty of shifting from peacetime habits to wartime action: he recalled how tank commander Avigdor Kahalani had asked whether he was permitted to use a paved road while under fire, because tanks were normally prohibited from driving on it in routine conditions.[9] Kaplinsky argued that the IDF in 2006 took too long to understand that it was — as he put it — "allowed to go on the blacktop."[9]

In January 2007, while still serving as deputy chief of staff and under consideration to replace Halutz, Kaplinsky asked Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz to withdraw his candidacy.[10] He explained that the Winograd Committee was still examining his wartime role, authority, influence, and performance, making it inappropriate for him to assume the top post before the facts had been clarified. He nevertheless maintained that he had the experience and ability to serve as chief of staff.[10]

In a 2009 article in INSS Military and Strategic Affairs, Kaplinsky offered an extensive retrospective account of how the IDF's condition at the outset of the Second Lebanon War had been shaped by the preceding years of counterterrorism operations.[9] His analysis, written as a senior participant rather than a neutral evaluator, traced the problem to the wave of Palestinian terrorism — especially suicide bombings — that began in September 2000.

Kaplinsky argued that the IDF redirected regular forces and resources toward counterterrorism at the expense of long-term force development, reserve stores, and conventional training, while Northern Command was treated as a secondary front.[9] He contrasted 2002, when he reported 42 terrorist attacks against Israel's civilian front resulting in 260 civilian and military deaths, with 2006, when he reported only two attacks and 17 civilian deaths — describing the decline as unprecedented, but emphasizing it came at a steep cost to other military readiness priorities.[9]

After Operation Defensive Shield in April 2002, Kaplinsky described a shift in IDF counterterrorism practice toward greater reliance on intelligence, small-unit operations, careful mission assessment, and a willingness to postpone operations when conditions were unsuitable — except in urgent "ticking bomb" scenarios.[9] He also recalled that field commanders were often kept in the rear during this period, a practice later referred to publicly as "plasma commanders."[9]

The multiyear "Kela" austerity program, formulated in 2003, compounded these strains.[9] It involved suspending tank reserves, grounding aircraft, closing units, and beginning the dismissal of approximately 6,000 career personnel.[9] Further cuts targeted reserve-duty days, training frequency, and inventory maintenance; by 2006, Kaplinsky reported, some reserve units had gone six years without training under fire.[9] He was explicit that these conditions helped explain the IDF's state of preparedness but did not excuse how the campaign was actually conducted.[9]

As a battalion commander in 1981–1982, Kaplinsky had witnessed intensive exercises and training before the 1982 Lebanon operation; he presented that earlier standard as a contrast to the limited conventional-war training that operational commitments allowed in later years.[9] He also recounted, from his time commanding the Golani Brigade, arguing against proposals to extend unit operational deployments from three months to four, warning that longer deployments would undermine training and readiness for threats other than counterterrorism — a concern he said was borne out when some Central Command units served ten or twelve months continuously on operations during the suicide-terrorism campaign.[9]

After completing his military service at the end of 2007, Kaplinsky became CEO of Better Place Israel, the Israeli arm of an electric-vehicle infrastructure venture.[11][6] A 2018 profile reported that he spent four years as the venture's CEO.[12] In November 2012, he resigned ahead of a transition to new global leadership, telling employees he had stayed until incoming global CEO Evan Thornley had taken up the role and completed his orientation.[11] He denied a falling-out with Israel Corporation owner Idan Ofer, though sources cited by Ynet attributed the departure partly to the company's poor performance and differences of opinion with Ofer; Better Place had raised $750 million and lost $474 million from its establishment in 2007 through the second half of 2012.[11]

In January 2013, Kaplinsky became CEO of Nesher, a major Israeli cement producer, and remained in the position for approximately seven years.[6][13] During his tenure he oversaw changes to production systems to meet environmental regulations, introduced alternative fuels, and saw the launch of a natural-gas power station in Ramla.[13] He left Nesher in 2019 following the completion of a strategic plan and organizational change process.[13]

Kaplinsky later became chairman of Bazan and was still serving in that role in August 2026.[14] At the annual Globes business conference in Tel Aviv in December 2024, he called for a coherent government plan to set recovery priorities after the ongoing conflict, expressing concern about the lack of a budget to help residents return to northern Israel and warning of a possible "lost decade" comparable to the period following the Yom Kippur War.[15] In August 2026, he said Bazan had plans to expand and improve its refinery operations but argued that committing further capital in Israel amid uncertainty over government plans for the Haifa Bay refineries would be irresponsible toward investors.[14]

Kaplinsky continued to analyze the IDF's readiness and command culture after leaving military service. In his 2009 account, he argued that the conditions preceding the Second Lebanon War helped explain, but did not excuse, the campaign's conduct, and he emphasized operational planning, training, reserves, and military-political dialogue as continuing lessons.[9]

Reflecting on Operation Cast Lead in 2008–2009, Kaplinsky said he observed the IDF applying many lessons from the Lebanon experience, including prepared operational plans, training down to the individual soldier, and improved coordination among ground forces, air forces, and intelligence.[9] He remained concerned, however, about the quality of dialogue between military and political leaders and the clarity of operational goals.[9]

Kaplinsky's role during the Second Lebanon War attracted scrutiny. Ynet characterized his dispatch to Northern Command as an attempt to circumvent the authority of Northern Command chief Udi Adam, while Mako described his placement on the northern front as controversial.[7][16] Before the Winograd Committee released its interim report, Jerusalem Post reporting indicated that Kaplinsky — along with Gadi Eizenkot — could be criticized for not pressing Halutz to launch a ground operation in southern Lebanon earlier in the war, and that IDF sources anticipated possible sanctions; these remained allegations and expectations at the time, not published committee findings.[17][18] Kaplinsky consulted an attorney before his Winograd testimony about the scope of his authority to question his superior's decisions.[18]

His retrospective account of the IDF's pre-war readiness, published in 2009, is explicitly that of a senior participant defending decisions made under his own watch; it does not constitute an independent institutional assessment.[9] His public optimism in July 2006 that Hezbollah's rocket fire could be suppressed contrasted with the subsequent course of events and with the views of leading Israeli experts at the time, as documented by the BESA Center.[8]