When Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz visited the IDF Northern Command for the first time since assuming the military’s top job last Wednesday, his spokesperson released the kind of video that would normally get little attention. Katz was sitting at a desk full of screens, with IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi next to him and officers standing behind him, talking about the IDF continuing the ground operation to destroy Hezbollah’s terrorist infrastructure.

“We will not allow any arrangement that does not include achieving the war’s objectives — which are disarming Hezbollah, pushing them beyond the Litani River and creating conditions for the safe return of northern residents to their homes,” Katz said.

A few seconds of the video went viral in Israel. When Katz said that “disarming Hezbollah” is one of the war’s aims, Halevi, agog, turned his head to look at Katz.

Disarming Hezbollah is not one of the war’s objectives as determined by the Cabinet. By the following morning, a source with knowledge of the matter told Jewish Insider that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Katz not to make such a claim again.

The surprising declaration was not out of character for Katz, who has long been nicknamed a “bulldozer,” and has famously called himself Herod, after the Roman-Jewish king known for his ambitious building projects, including Ceasarea and the Second Temple.

When Netanyahu dismissed former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in early November and replaced him with Katz, much of the media coverage in English and Hebrew described him as someone who would be a “yes-man,” and would not clash with the prime minister in leading the war. The prevailing analysis in Israeli media was that Gallant’s sacking was about the then-defense minister’s insistence on conscripting Haredim to the IDF, whereas Katz would make sure to preserve the governing coalition, which includes two Haredi parties that oppose mandatory military service for their voter base.

Yet, on Friday, Katz’s office announced that it would send 7,000 conscription orders to Haredim, seeing through a prior decision made by his predecessor; the first 1,000 draft orders were sent this week.

”Yes-man” was not a term typically used to describe Katz in his 26 years in the Knesset. While Katz has not had many clashes with Netanyahu, he is known in Israel for his confrontational style.

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Katz, 69, grew up in Kfar Achim, a religious moshav in southern Israel where former Defense Minister Benny Gantz, four years his junior, grew up as well. Katz’s parents were Holocaust survivors.

He was an officer in the IDF Paratroopers Brigade, reaching the rank of captain, and served in the first Lebanon War as a reservist. 

As a student at Hebrew University, he was chairman of the student union at a time when the country’s heated political debates were playing out on campus. He was involved in Likud activism on campus with National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi and former Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman. In one incident, Katz and Hanegbi sought to stop a demonstration by Arab and left-wing student groups – including Azmi Bishara, later a Knesset member, spy for Hezbollah and Qatar-based fugitive – that they argued included incitement against Israel. Hanegbi said he saw an Arab student with a knife, and he and Katz were accused of leading a group that struck the opposing students with metal chains and clubs, but were later acquitted by the head of the university’s disciplinary committee, professor Gabriella Shalev, who would become Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations. Katz later trapped the university’s dean in his office to protest violence by Arab students, and was suspended from his studies for a year.

Katz advised Ariel Sharon at the Industry and Trade Ministry in the 1980s and led his campaign to return to Likud politics after his ouster from the Defense Ministry. He served as an aide to Sharon and worked on the Likud campaign for most of the years until he was elected to the Knesset in 1998, replacing Ehud Olmert when the future prime minister was elected mayor of Jerusalem. Katz’s first Cabinet post was as agriculture minister in 2003. 

Katz unsuccessfully ran against Netanyahu for Likud leader in 2005, after Sharon left the party to found Kadima. Yet Katz continued to have a major power base within Likud, winning two elections to chair the Likud secretariat, a position he has held twice, in 2004 and again from 2013 until the present, giving him authority in the party’s internal decision-making processes. He is one of the only lawmakers to continue the once-common Likud tradition of cultivating the base by holding holiday parties; he has long hosted an annual Sukkot event, co-hosted with his wife, Ronit, and featuring his dog Chubby, whose photos he frequently posts to Facebook.

But Katz forged his reputation in Israel after becoming transportation minister in 2009. He earned his nickname “bulldozer,” advancing Israeli highway construction and new train lines in Israel’s periphery. He was the engine behind the much-lauded “Open Skies” agreement with the EU, bringing European low-cost airlines into Israel and increasing the traffic in and out of Ben Gurion Airport by 60%.

A longtime former aide to Katz said he had a talent at shaking up stubborn government bureaucracies: “For a representative of a conservative party, he was very bold. He wasn’t afraid of conflict with anyone. Not the unions, that everyone was afraid to touch, or the top of the government.” 

At the same time, the ex-aide, who advised Katz when he was transportation and intelligence minister and now works in the tech sector, said that “in contrast with his image, he was very thoughtful. He would think significantly ahead, even 10 years forward … in a way I didn’t see any other politician do. He got things done at the highest level, against all odds. He was diligent; he would really study the issues. If he wanted to reform the ports or build a light rail, he wouldn’t just listen to the professionals. He would learn about it in depth, and when there were obstacles, he would know how to resolve them.” 

However, veteran political analyst Sophie Ron Moria wrote in Ma’ariv this week that Katz “is not bad at getting things done in areas that don’t require general knowledge, broad horizons and vision. … The Transportation Ministry is his ceiling.” 

Once Katz left the Transportation Ministry for more senior Cabinet posts, his reputation took a hit.

In remarks that immediately turned into memes, Katz famously called himself a greater builder than King Herod for privatizing part of the Ashdod port: “Herod built the port of Caesarea when he wanted to turn Israel, under Roman rule, into a center of world trade. He did not succeed. I succeeded,” he said at a Calcalist conference in 2020. 

Katz’s new nickname came back to haunt him later in 2020, when he was Israel’s finance minister as the world and its economy was dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. He authorized three lockdowns that resulted in the closure of over 70,000 small businesses that year. He gave grants to all Israelis, increasing the budget deficit to the highest it had been since the hyperinflation of the 1980s, and faced accusations that he was giving away money because of the upcoming election. 

Two senior Finance Ministry officials exchanged text messages in which they mockingly called him Herod and lamented that he had a populist approach, with the ministry’s communications director saying that “any time there’s a news item about a needy population they immediately get billions.” The texts later leaked to the media and Katz unsuccessfully attempted to fire the officials; both remain in their jobs to this day. Three of the Finance Ministry’s top officials resigned that year, including the director-general, head of the budget department and accountant-general. Shaul Meridor, the budget director at the time, accused Katz of making decisions under the “influence of narrow interest [groups] … the message to the business sector, citizens of this country and to the world is that all principles are broken. All limits and boundaries, as well as [moral] values, crushed under his foot. I have never seen such behavior.”

Prominent Israeli economic commentator Nehemia Shtrasler called Katz “Israel’s worst finance minister ever.” 

Katz also served as intelligence minister in 2015-2020, a position that, despite its impressive-sounding name, has little authority, though he parlayed the position to get a seat in Israel’s security cabinet. While at the Intelligence Ministry, he came up with his plan to create an artificial island off the coast of Gaza that would serve as a port and feature power and desalination plants and possibly an airport serving Gazans, to reduce Israel’s responsibility for their everyday needs. Katz has shopped around the island plan repeatedly since its inception in 2017, yet it was at the center of a mini-scandal after Katz presented the plan to EU foreign ministers in Brussels after becoming foreign minister at the beginning of the year. Media reports claimed that Katz suggested housing Palestinians on the island, instead of seeking a two-state solution, which the Israeli Foreign Ministry denied. The EU’s then-foreign envoy, Josep Borrell, dismissed the plan as irrelevant. Katz’s former aide, however, said the Gaza island — “implementable or not” — was emblematic of his forward thinking.

Katz served as foreign minister from January until November, but he previously served in the role in an interim position for three months in 2019. On his first day, Katz sparked a diplomatic crisis with Poland, which was passing a law targeting people who assert Polish complicity in the Holocaust, when he repeated a quote from former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir that “the Poles suckled antisemitism with their mothers’ milk.” 

Netanyahu overshadowed Katz in all matters relating to foreign affairs, as he has all foreign ministers serving under him in the past decade. Since returning to the Foreign Ministry, Katz, who is not fluent in English, mostly stood out for his frequent use of AI to generate images of Israel’s adversaries, including a now-viral image of the Ayatollah Khamenei’s head inside an eggshell, with a caption reading, “Iran is like an egg, hard on the outside but soft on the inside.” 

As foreign minister, Katz also declared U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres persona non grata in Israel, and withdrew ambassadors from Spain, Norway and Ireland after the countries recognized a Palestinian state. 

In his final speech as foreign minister, Katz said that he was proud to have brought relatives of Israelis held hostage in Gaza to every meeting he had with foreign dignitaries, and that he made it clear to the world that there will be no cease-fire without the hostages. He said that he “succeeded in preserving [Israel’s] legitimacy and preventing decisions by international bodies and countries that asked us to stop the war unconditionally. That gives the IDF … the ability to act to reach its goals. It’s a security net, Israel’s diplomatic Iron Dome.” 

Katz’s former aide argued that the defense minister’s at-times aggressive approach could be an asset.  “At the end of the day, when you have a senior minister dealing with a lot of challenges, are you looking for someone delicate? Who is the aggression directed towards?” she asked rhetorically. 

“On the political level, he always tried to keep the delicate balance between being aggressive and being a statesmanlike character. They’re in conflict, it’s not easy, but the way to do it is through his ability to get s–t done. When he did that, he was more popular not only within Likud but in the whole population,” the aide said.

Since taking over at the Defense Ministry, Katz plans to continue to work in close cooperation with the Pentagon, a ministry source said, adding that, contrary to media reports, his first phone call with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin went well. 

“There was no ultimatum,” about slowing down weapons if more aid does not enter Gaza, the source said. Austin “brought up humanitarian aid … but he said he hoped that positive cooperation will continue.”

The proof of that may be the fact that there were no consequences even though Israel’s increased distribution of aid to Gaza, by Israeli officials’ own admission, fell short of the demands made by Austin and Secretary of State Tony Blinken in a letter last month.

Katz is also looking forward to working with the Trump administration, the source said before Pete Hegseth was tapped by President-elect Donald Trump for secretary of defense, adding that while Katz has spoken out against cease-fires, Trump wants to end the war with an Israeli victory.

None of that is surprising; any feasible Israeli defense minister would want to maintain the close and strategic relationship with Washington. 

The question on Israelis’ minds is what kind of defense minister Katz will be. Katz would not be the first defense minister whose national security experience came mostly from the Security Cabinet and not the military, but many Israeli analysts have raised questions about whether that is enough to take on the role in the midst of a multifront war.  

Katz has had few conflicts with Netanyahu in the nearly 20 years since there were separate pro-Sharon and pro-Netanyahu camps within the party. By replacing Gallant with Katz, Netanyahu put a closer ally in the job. But the question remains whether Katz will offer alternative ideas and views for the Cabinet to consider – even if he is unlikely to air those disagreements publicly, as Gallant did – or if he will be, in effect, Netanyahu’s long arm.

Katz seems to have asserted his independence with the move towards mass conscription of young Haredi men, a move that did not go over well with the Shas and United Torah Judaism parties and sparked protests in the streets of the Haredi city of Bnei Brak.

His longtime former aide said she’s “unimpressed” by the analysis that he will do whatever the prime minister says. “For as long as I’ve known him, that’s what’s been said. It wasn’t true then and it’s not true now.”

Ron Moriah, however, said when Katz says that Israel defeated Hamas and Hezbollah, for example, it should be viewed as “a trial balloon that Benjamin Netanyahu is launching” to convince the public of that victory, she said. “As defense minister, Katz is a puppet that is repeating the lines of the one pulling the strings,” she wrote.