Days into role, new Mossad chief dismisses highly experienced deputy director

The newly inaugurated director of the Mossad, Roman Gofman, announced on Saturday that he had dismissed the agency’s deputy director, identified only as “Aleph,” in the first major step he has taken to shake up the intelligence agency’s leadership.

In a statement released by the Prime Minister’s Office on behalf of the Mossad, Gofman said he was terminating Aleph’s employment as he “seeks to shape the senior leadership team that will accompany him in meeting the goals and challenges facing the organization in the coming years.

Gofman started his role on Tuesday, marking an end to the lengthy legal challenges he faced since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his nomination in December 2025. In his previous role, he served as Netanyahu’s military secretary.

According to the statement, during his 22 years of service, Aleph was at the forefront of the organization’s operational activity in three different divisions, commanded two of them, and led a series of groundbreaking operations. For his achievements, he was awarded five Israel Security Prizes.

Gofman thanked Aleph for his service, and Aleph wished Gofman success in his role, the statement said.

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Aleph was known in the Mossad as a “Bibist” — a supporter of Netanyahu — but also was the preferred candidate of Gofman’s predecessor, David Barnea, to take over the post, a source with knowledge of the details told Channel 12 news.

Gofman ousted Aleph to put an end to the “saga,” the source said.

His decision to dismiss Aleph has been criticized internally, the Ynet news outlet reported, as the new Mossad chief has no intelligence experience and is unfamiliar with the agency. Members of the Mossad would have preferred that Aleph at least stay to aid Gofman while he begins his role, the report said.

Sources in the Mossad also posited that Aleph might have made things difficult for Gofman, since he saw himself as Barnea’s rightful successor, Ynet added.

Barnea had reportedly opposed Gofman’s appointment.

Gofman is expected to choose someone from inside the Mossad as his deputy, sources told Ynet.

The move to dismiss Aleph came almost a week after the High Court of Justice rejected petitions seeking to annul Gofman’s appointment and allegations that while serving as a senior commander in the IDF, he acted in a manner that violated the required standards of ethical conduct for senior state officials.

While he was the commander of the 210th “Bashan” Regional Division in the Golan Heights in 2022, Gofman approved the use of then 17-year-old blogger Ori Elmakayes to carry out an Arabic-language influence campaign against Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas.

Elmakayes was asked to publish information in his Telegram channel by his handler, referred to as Captain Tzur, since it was read by enemy elements inside Syria.

However, Elmakayes was arrested and interrogated by the Shin Bet, and, so he claims, tortured during the process. He was kept in solitary confinement for two months and under different forms of detention for some 18 months until the charges were eventually dropped, after his lawyers belatedly managed to prove that he had been working with the Israel Defense Forces.

An IDF investigation was conducted in May 2022 into the affair, in which Gofman said he had not known Elmakayes’s identity or the specifics of the operation. The investigation resulted in Gofman receiving a disciplinary note in his record because he had not received authorization to use Elmakayes’s Telegram channel in an operation.

Elmakayes filed a petition against Gofman’s appointment to lead the Mossad on the grounds that he had failed to alert the law enforcement agencies that he had been working in cooperation with the IDF, constituting a major ethical violation leading to Elmakayes’ prolonged legal ordeal.

The Movement for Quality Government also filed a petition accusing Gofman of lying to an IDF investigation over the matter, which it said was also a grave ethical violation.

The court ultimately rejected the petitions in a two-to-one decision on Monday, determining that although there were failures with how Gofman handled the incident at the center of the petitions against him, he did not deliberately mislead an investigation into the affair or “abandon” Elmakayes.

Elmakayes said he accepted the court’s decision not to intervene, and that he believed Gofman would act with greater restraint as a result of the legal battle he waged against his appointment.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.