Israeli Defense Minister Moshe (Bogie) Ya’alon had been part and parcel of the historic Labor movement: He was born in the “Red” (Labor bastion) Kiryat Haim suburb, was a cadet in the HaNoar HaOved VeHalomed Labor Zionist youth movement and afterward joined a kibbutz. Only at a relatively late stage, after he was appointed head of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Military Intelligence, did Ya’alon undergo an ideological reversal. He changed his outlook, took a turn to the right and joined the Likud after he retired from the IDF in 2005.

Ya’alon’s journey from the hub of the historic Mapai Party (mother party of Israeli Labor) to the Likud center was described in an Al-Monitor article in August 2014. The question now is whether this journey has played itself out and whether Ya’alon is now planning to make his way back.

On April 8-9, on the heels of a wave of unprecedented incitement against him in the ranks of the radical right and among Likud activists, speculations were heard in the political corridors regarding Ya’alon’s political future. An image that appeared on the social networks showed Ya’alon’s face through the scope of a rifle. Anonymous activists from the ruling party were quoted as swearing to eliminate Ya’alon politically, on the heels of the March 24 affair of the Israeli soldier who shot and killed a neutralized terrorist in Hebron, in front of a B’Tselem activist camera (and Ya'alon's decision to indict the shooter).

“He [Ya'alon] has no future in the Likud,” a political source told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. But Ya'alon himself, known to be obstinate, has not folded under pressure. He sticks to his guns, and supports the IDF and Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot in the immediate action taken against the soldier and the decision to transfer the case for a criminal investigation.