A top defense official has said that anyone who thinks that the IDF will not be harmed by the government’s judicial overhaul policy becoming law without significantly more negotiating and compromise is living in a different era.
“Whoever thinks they can leave the outside of it [ the judicial overhaul debate] in 2023 is living in a world of more than 50 years ago – and even then it was hard,” to keep major public policy debates from distracting the military’s functioning, said the source.
According to the source, the IDF is currently at the proper level of readiness for any security challenges by virtue of a carefully calibrated mix of deterring IDF reservists from striking, while keeping an open dialogue to make officers feel their voices are heard.
However, the senior defense source said that all the vulnerabilities in terms of officers who are just barely holding the line are ready to ignite and spread through the military.
“A continuation [of the judicial overhaul with no pause] will harm the IDF’s readiness and it will spread from the reserves to the mandatory service units and to other parts of the IDF. We are trying to overcome this. We already see the breach,” said the official.
Further, the official said, “there will start to be a refusal to apply to the officers course, long time veterans will quit and pressure from families on officers to quit will rise.”
“There has already been damage. This is the reason why it [the judicial overhaul] needs to stop immediately. A military unit requires unity. When there is conflict in a unit, it leads to” bad things, said the defense official.
Moreover, the top official said that Israel’s many “enemies see an opportunity to secure new achievements. Our deterrence is eroding. We need to stop [the legislation] and wait for dialogue until the Knesset summer session. We need a dialogue with consensus, all protests must stop and all IDF reservist strikes [from serving] must stop.”
Threats continue to escalate from Iran and local terror organizations
The senior defense official surveyed threats that are escalating from Iran’s nuclear program to Palestinian terror on multiple fronts, thriving off every new episode on other fronts.
In addition, the sources said that Hezbollah and even other Lebanese terror groups, including Palestinians in Lebanon, are becoming more aggressive and daring in attacking Israel, such as with the recent Megiddo junction bombing.
Iran continues to try to smuggle advanced weapons to its proxies in Syria and to Hezbollah and the global competition between the US on one side and Russia and China on the opposite side, is also having potentially dangerous consequences for Israel.
In light of the cumulative impact of these dangers and the need to maintain a constant “war between wars” level of readiness – not just a theoretical future readiness for one large war – the top defense official insisted on a pause on the judicial overhaul legislation.