- Reservists in the Sayeret Matkal elite special-operations force where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once served signed an open letter last weekend refusing to continue serving if his government passes an antidemocratic law. Two former prime ministers also served in that unit (one as its commander) and are now fierce critics of the premier.
The former deputy commander of the signals intelligence unit where Yariv Levin once served announced that he could no longer serve if the justice minister’s “legal reform” proceeds.
- President Isaac Herzog, who has been trying and failing to broker a compromise to the judicial overhaul crisis in recent months, was also an officer in that unit.
Dozens of naval commandos have been holding a vigil outside the home of their one-time commander, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, demanding that he speak out against the laws being passed by a government of which he is a key member.
- Hundreds of pilots, meanwhile, have threatened to stop their voluntary service and ground themselves if the government, of which fellow fighter pilot Yoav Kisch is education minister, leads Israel down the path to “dictatorship.”
- A letter to former head of the Shin Bet security service Avi Dichter, demanding that he resign as agriculture minister, has been signed by former agents who, for reasons of state security, can only use their initials.
Of course, there’s nothing new about the almost incestuous intimacy of Israel’s ruling class, born out of their years spent together in Israel’s most elite military units. Other countries have similar cliques and rivalries that began in exclusive private schools and universities, and continued into parliament and around cabinet tables.
But the showdown over the judicial overhaul, between Netanyahu’s government and the thousands of reserve officers determined to stop it, has become a battle for the very ethos of service and privilege in Israel.
The army of the people?
For all the importance of the Israel Defense Forces in Israeli society, the country does not have an officer class. Despite the ruling coalition’s attempts to portray “the pilots” as a group of arrogant and privileged Ashkenazim, they include many with Mizrahi roots who were the first in their families to fly and become officers.
Neither is high rank or a prestigious unit a prerequisite for high political office. Of Israel’s six previous prime ministers, two were generals (Ariel Sharon and Ehud Barak), three served in the elite Sayeret Matkal unit (Barak, Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett), but two were lowly sergeants (Ehud Olmert and Yair Lapid) who flunked out of combat service and ended up as correspondents for the IDF magazine.
Netanyahu’s current cabinet has only one general (Defense Minister Gallant) and many ministers who for religious reasons either exempted themselves entirely from the military or served only a few brief months in clerical positions.
- It even has one member, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who was considered a security risk due to his far-right activities and was disqualified from service.
There is an irony that in the name of preserving Israeli democracy, the center-left is now putting its ranks and service records on the scales. Whether or not the threat to Israel’s national security will be enough to pressure Netanyahu into stepping back from the brink before his coalition passes a law to eliminate the reasonableness standard (which allows the High Court of Justice to block certain government decisions), the hallowed principle of tzva ha’am – the army of the people, upon which the IDF was founded in 1948 – will never mean the same again.
But the reservists didn’t start it.
The aggressive and antagonistic way the government has been pursuing its policies – not just its judicial changes but also most of the other laws it has pushed – did more than any refusal to serve to erode fundamental concepts of solidarity and consensus. Concepts that are essential for any country with aspirations of being a democracy to maintain if it wants to preserve an army of the people.
Dictatorships have people’s armies as well, but they need press-gangs to draft them and politruks (political officers) to shoot the soldiers in the back if they refuse to advance on the battlefield. The Netanyahu government is rapidly destroying any future for the IDF as an army of the people, no matter how many officers continue to turn up for reserve duty.
The truth needs to be stated, though:
Even before Netanyahu’s return to power with his angry and resentful coalition, Israel’s service ethos was in bad shape: Large parts of society were not joining up, and there was a worrying preponderance of the urban middle classes in desirable tech units – where service can lead to a lucrative civilian career – while the less elite combat battalions were increasingly populated by those on the social periphery.
A lot of the resentment and frustrations coming to the fore now were bubbling under the surface for a long time. And we haven’t even mentioned the effect on the IDF of having to serve as a police force in service of the settlers in the occupied territories for 56 years.
Whatever the future of Israel’s limited and fragile democracy, it is already clear now that the values of the IDF and the notions of service in Israel will never be the same again.
Source: Anshel Pfeffer – Haaretz