Roman Gofman, Who Reached Ashdod at 14, Now Runs the Mossad

Roman Gofman formally took office as director of the Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence service, in an appointment announced by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a personal message published on 2 June 2026. Netanyahu wrote that Gofman had immigrated to Israel from Belarus at the age of 14 with his parents, Ludmila and Vladislav, that the family settled in the southern port city of Ashdod, and that Gofman had made his own way and overcome every difficulty.

The prime minister said he had chosen Gofman as his military secretary after a long military career, describing the period as the most fateful the country has faced, and that Gofman was now entering the intelligence post. The message was a congratulation rather than a briefing: it set out no policy, no priorities and no timetable.

The career behind the appointment

Gofman was born in Belarus and came to Israel in 1990, aged 14, The Jewish Chronicle reported. He rose through armoured formations to division command, having led the Etzion Brigade between 2015 and 2017 and the 7th Armoured Brigade from 2017 to 2019. The Jerusalem Post lists further commands including the 75th Battalion, the Bashan Division and the IDF ground training centre at Tze'elim, and describes him as the most senior IDF officer wounded during the Gaza war. He was hurt in a gun battle at the Sha'ar HaNegev junction on 7 October 2023, sustaining a serious knee injury, according to The Jewish Chronicle. He became Netanyahu's military secretary in May 2024.

An appointment that divided the vetting panel

The path to the post was not smooth. Netanyahu named Gofman as his choice in December 2025, and the Senior Appointments Advisory Committee approved him on 12 April 2026 to begin a five-year term on 2 June, succeeding David Barnea, The Times of Israel reported. The committee did not agree: a former president of the Supreme Court recommended disqualification over a 2022 episode in which Gofman, as a commander, approved the use of a 17-year-old in an Arabic-language influence campaign; the teenager was held for 18 months before the charges against him were dropped, once the classified material he had published was shown to have come from IDF officers. The other three members of the panel backed the appointment.

What a Mossad director does, and does not, explain

The Mossad's chief serves a fixed term (five years in this case) and operates almost entirely outside public accounting. Nothing in the prime minister's message describes the agency's tasks, its budget or its relationship with the political level, and no such statement was expected to. What the message does show is the closeness of the relationship: the incoming director spent the two preceding years as the prime minister's uniformed adviser.

What is still unclear

The statement did not name the outgoing director, give the length of the term, or say when the handover ceremony took place. It did not mention the controversy that split the vetting committee. Nor did it indicate what, if anything, changes at the agency under new leadership.