Gabi Ashkenazi Training on Land (מל"י) in 2009. Gabi Ashkenazi Gabriel "Gabi" Ashkenazi (; born February 25, 1954) was the Chief of General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces from 2007 to 2011. He was the fourth Mizrahi Jew to become Chief of Staff of the IDF. Ashkenazi was born and grew up in Hagor, a moshav, or cooperative agricultural community in the Sharon region of central Israel, of which his parents were among the founders. His father, a Holocaust survivor, had immigrated to Israel from Bulgaria, while his mother had immigrated from Syria. Ashkenazi completed high school at a military boarding
Haredim and Zionism Sephardi or Mizrahi rabbis is far lower than among Ashkenazi rabbis, and these constitute a small minority of the Sephardi Haredi leadership. The Sephardi Haredi political party in the Knesset is Shas, which represents the vast majority of Sephardi Haredim, and is headed by Aryeh Deri. In 2010, Shas joined the World Zionist Organization, and officially became the first Zionist Haredi party. The party's long-time spiritual leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, opposed saying Hallel in the Yom HaAtzmaut prayer service, but writes that, "One may say Hallel after the completion of the prayers, without the blessing..." While in the past, when