Tomer Bar
During his term, which ended on May 5, former Air Force chief Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar approved the assassination of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei; Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah; decimated Hezbollah’s strategic missiles and rockets; bombed much of the Assad Syria regime’s threatening weapons; bombed Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs three to four times; bombed the Houthis in Yemen; and continued ongoing strikes on Hezbollah and Hamas terrorists who got too careless and stepped out into the light from their hiding places.
Certainly, the air force always has partners in military intelligence, the Mossad or the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency).
But broadly speaking, Bar succeeded in returning an aura of supremacy to the Israeli air force, which had been shattered after it failed to assist in a meaningful way to block Hamas’s October 7 invasion.
Air power does have limits.
Israel and Bar, along with the American air force, failed to topple the Iranian regime in early 2026, and the outcome from the air force’s failed September 2025 attack on Hamas officials in Qatar started a series of moves by the US regarding the future of Gaza, where Jerusalem has been cut out of much of the decision-making.
But some of these issues were not as much failures by Bar and the Air Force as they were reminders that airpower, without sufficient personnel on the ground, cannot accomplish all complex foreign policy goals.
Bar was the only major Israeli defense official other than former IDF Operations command chief Oded Basiuk, who served out his full term after October 7 due to a mix of recognition of his value as a commander post-invasion and that his shortcomings that day were not at the center of the disaster.
The former Air Force chief has gone silent since exiting public service.
Omer Tishler
In his inaugural speech in office on May 5, Air Force chief Maj. Gen. Omer Tishler said, “We are closely following what is happening in Iran, and we are ready to bring the air force back eastward, if needed.”
Further, he stated, “We will not let our enemies build up their power on our borders – the air force is acting and will continue to act with determination, power, and responsibility to remove threats from all fronts, at any range, and confronting any enemy.”
Tishler addressed Israel’s “international partners” in attendance, especially the US. “During the many months we are fighting together side by side, based on our shared values. I want to express my deep appreciation for your bold leadership,” he said.
Tishler was appointed by IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir as the key military liaison with the US in preparation for the 2026 war, even though Tomer Bar remained in overall command.
Born in Karmiel in 1975, Tishler flew as a fighter pilot in both the F-15 and F-16 fighter jets and eventually commanded the Nevatim Airbase, which hosts the F-35 aircraft.
In 2007, he led an eight-aircraft combat mission to destroy Syria’s secret nuclear program.
Tishler played a pivotal role as the head of IAF Air Operations from 2021 to 2023 before becoming IAF chief of staff on September 26, 2023, just before Hamas’s invasion.
Given that he was new to the role and was not summoned for any of the middle-of-the-night IDF debates in the hours before the offensive, he was not given any special blame for the IDF’s failures by the air force probe or the later probe commissioned by Zamir.
Shlomi Binder
Shlomi Binder took over the reins of IDF intelligence in August 2024 in the midst of a whirlwind that threatened to tear the once-storied directorate apart, and in a single month restored it to a juggernaut. In two months, he built it into a king-killer. And in less than a year, he pulled off what many call Israel’s most successful operation since the 1967 Six Day War.
Depending on one’s political persuasion, some blame Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu more or less for October 7; some former Shin Bet director Ronen Bar; some former IDF chief of staff Herzi Halevi; some prior IDF chiefs, IDF intelligence chiefs, Shin Bet chiefs, and some other prime ministers. Everyone blames former IDF intelligence chief Aharon Haliva, whom Binder replaced.
To restore IDF intelligence to its former glory and beyond, he replaced many of the top officials in the apparatus, but had to replace them carefully with top talent.
He went farther than that. He created a new brigade-sized unit with a brigadier general as commander to question the IDF analysis section’s conclusions.
Binder brought back Arabic speakers and Muslim-cultural experts in larger numbers to read between the lines when it comes to the vast amounts of big data that IDF intelligence collects, but which it apparently misread on October 7, having reduced the number of such experts.
Moreover, he further empowered Unit 504 in a long-term and permanent fashion to focus on getting human spies in Gaza, something which his predecessors had not done in over a decade, leaning more solely on technological data collection.
There are now clear officials in IDF intelligence officially responsible for giving a warning of invasion so that no one can pass the buck to others.
These are only some of the longer-term ways he has completely reshaped military intelligence, while also helping artificial intelligence and technological measures jump forward at a much faster rate.
But what the public knows about is the history-shifting exploding beepers against Hezbollah which Binder’s IDF intelligence pulled off in conjunction with the Mossad a month into his term. Weeks later his intelligence with the Mossad led to assassinating Hezbollah Chief Hassan Nasrallah and with the air force he decimated Hezbollah’s strategic missiles and rockets.
Two months into his term, the IDF killed Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar. Three months into his term, his intelligence guided the air force in bombing much of the Assad Syria regime’s threatening weapons.
Finally, 10 months into office in June 2025, IDF intelligence took down most of Iran’s nuclear program and led to the assassination of most of Iran’s top leaders.
IDF intelligence, along with the Mossad and the air force, would later lead to the assassination of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, striking over 2,500 key targets in Iran in 2026, bombing the Yemen Houthis, and continuing ongoing strikes on Hezbollah and Hamas terrorists to reduce the threat they posed.
When Binder finishes his IDF career, likely in August 2027, he will likely leave office with the unofficial title of being the father of the newly resurrected IDF intelligence directorate.