Who is Herzi Halevi, the chief of staff of the Israel Defence Forces?

livemint.com:

divisions over proposed reforms to the country’s Supreme Court. Some reservists threatened not to serve if the divisive prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and his far-right coalition passed laws weakening the powers of the court. It was one of the army’s most turbulent periods in recent times.

Hamas’s murder of 1,400 Israelis, and capture of more than 200 hostages, eclipsed all that. General Halevi is now commanding an aerial and ground offensive against the militant group in Gaza, in which more than 10,000 Palestinians have died, according to the enclave’s health ministry. Popular rage at the way Israel is conducting the war has inspired protests in many countries.

The UN human-rights office says that Israel may have committed a war crime when it struck the Jabalia refugee camp. A minister in the Netanyahu government raised the possibility of using nuclear weapons against Gaza (he was suspended for his remarks). But in General Halevi Israel has a commander with a strong reputation for upholding legal and ethical standards in the conduct of warfare.

What is his background and how might it influence how he prosecutes the war? He was born in 1967 in Jerusalem and named after his uncle, who had been killed in action a few months earlier in the Six Day War. His mother’s family had lived in the city for 14 generations; his paternal grandparents emigrated from Russia. His father’s father was a member of Irgun, a Zionist paramilitary group active in the years leading up to the establishment of Israel.