The Last Command: Coverage of the Deaths of IDF Chiefs of Staff in the Israeli Press

This qualitative text analysis examines the journalistic death coverage of three Chiefs of Staff: Yaakov Dori (1973), David Elazar (1976) and Haim Laskov (1982). The content analysis was conducted on 398 issues of five widely circulated Israeli daily newspapers as well as 13 issues of a military weekly (Bamahane).Although all three held exactly the same position, the coverage of their deaths differed markedly and in fundamentally distinct ways. Despite serving as Chiefs of Staff for only about one year, Dori was portrayed as a "founding father" of the IDF and as a responsible, courageous and historically significant commander. Laskov, too, was depicted as an important military leader, a significant figure in shaping the character of the IDF and a commander who knew how to combine discipline and strictness with sensitivity and tolerance.In stark contrast, the coverage of the death of Elazar, the Chiefs of Staff of the Yom Kippur War, generated a broad, turbulent, emotionally charged and critical journalistic discourse, reigniting the debate over the failures of the war. Following his sudden death, the newspapers adopted a more forgiving tone, refraining from speak ill of the dead, argued that Elazar functioned calmly, wisely and bravely during the war. However, as the head of the military system during that deadly war, Elazar’s name, memory and legacy became permanently associated with the failures of preparedness and assessment of enemy intentions and capabilities and the war’s heavy death toll.