Here are two facts worth remembering about the Israeli Air Force’s 69th Squadron: The first is that this is the squadron that took part in the destruction of Syria’s nuclear reactor in 2007 in a mission that defied imagination and prevented an existential threat against the State of Israel.
The pilots of the F-15Is who flew in that mission did not know what their target would be until the day of the operation when they were informed – just a few hours before being ordered into their cockpits – that they would be flying into northeastern Syria to destroy a reactor being built by North Korea.
This was Syria before the civil war when the country had an air force, sophisticated Russian air defense systems and a massive arsenal of chemical weapons. Had something gone wrong on that mission, the war that could have erupted would have been unprecedented.
Here is another fact: A single F-15I – known by its Hebrew name “Ra’am” (Thunder) – can carry 20 GBU-39 smart bombs on its wings and fuselage. In Hebrew, the SDBs are called “Lethal Hail.” Now imagine what one of these planes can do and how much lethal hail it can rain down on Israel’s enemies in a single sortie.
This is all worth keeping in mind when listening to the way some government ministers have been talking about the airmen who announced this week that they would be skipping a day of reserve duty in protest of the continued legislation of the coalition’s judicial reform.
“There is a rift within the trust that we have in the political echelon and its decisions,” explained one of the pilots, Col. G. “There are people who feel that the connection we had between protecting the country and the purpose behind is being ripped apart.”
Here are just a few of the responses: Likud Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi said that the pilots can “go to hell.” Minister of Public Diplomacy Galit Distal Atbaryan called the pilots “narcissistic cowards.” Yaakov Bardugo, an extreme right-wing host of a show on Channel 14, called the pilots “pus that needs to be removed.” (It is no wonder that Bardugo is the one journalist to whom Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has given an interview since returning to power two months ago.)
These are just three examples of people in positions of power and influence who have no trouble speaking in the worst of terms about some of the bravest people this country has produced. The moment someone takes a stand that is against their own position – no matter who they are, what they have done for the country and what sacrifices they have made – they are accused of being cowards, pus and can simply go to hell.
Here is something that Karhi, Distal Atbaryan and Bardugo might not know. On Monday night when Israel bombed the airport in Aleppo to stop the smuggling of Iranian weapons into Syria, more than half of the airmen who participated in the mission were reservists.
Don’t get me wrong – in an ideal world, the IDF should remain above political disagreements and should not be dragged into the fray of the judicial reform. Service in the military is something that needs to remain pure and should not become contaminated with politics.
What the airmen also did was essentially give legitimacy to a refusal of orders that could come one day from the other side of the political map. Imagine a scenario that the next time the IDF is given the order to evacuate an illegal outpost, a group of soldiers and officers who live in the West Bank refuse to comply. The IDF and Israel will not survive like this.
On the other hand, we cannot simply ignore what is happening and just write these people off as “cowards” like the Likud ministers did. Karhi added that Israel will be fine without them which does not even make sense. All he has to do is look around the cabinet table he sits at and he sees that many of the ministers alongside him never served in the IDF and neither do their voters. Where exactly does he think Israel will find pilots and people like the elite commandos who have also threatened not to serve in the reserves?
Crisis of faith
There is a severe crisis of faith within the country right now and it cannot be ignored. These airmen – and thousands of others of reservists like them – feel that the social contract that was signed in blood by them with their country is being violated by a prime minister who is on trial for severe corruption charges and is trying to alter the country’s democratic character.
They – the few who put their lives on the line so we, the majority, can sleep safely at night – feel that the country to which they have committed their lives is changing. They have yet to receive an order that is unlawful, but they are concerned that such a day is coming and that is something they are not willing to support.
And while the refusal of orders is not something that a country can tolerate, we cannot pretend that this comes out of nowhere. Alongside the 37 airmen are thousands of additional reservists who feel like the country is changing and is heading in a direction that will only bring misery and sorrow.
These reservists feel that the country is slipping away from them and view their participation in the demonstrations against the judicial reform as a continuation of their service. When the prime minister’s son then calls them “terrorists” and the prime minister himself compares them to the Jewish terrorists who carried out the violent rampage in the Palestinian village of Huwara, the insult intensifies. Netanyahu’s silence in face of the comments by his son and ministers is hard to accept. He seems to be allowing this situation.
The ministers should know how valuable reservists are to the country. It is not as if there are tens of thousands of people knocking down the door asking to be called up for a month every year to serve their country. In total, only 1% of the country serves in active reserve duty (an average of 10 days every three years).
For those who don’t know what it is like, imagine getting a notice that in a few months you will need to leave your family, your workplace and the comfort of your home for two to four weeks of training in dusty and dirty bases and then daily patrols in places like the West Bank or the Egyptian border.
This is not exactly fun. Without these people, the army would not be able to carry out the myriad of missions it has on its plate. This is without mentioning what happens in times of war when reservists are called up (like what happened in Lebanon in 2006) to either actually go into conflict or – like during past operations in Gaza – to fill in for operational brigades in the West Bank which are called to the front.
For this social contract to remain intact, reservists need to know that the decisions being made at the highest levels of the government are sincere and pure and are being done based on the values that they have committed to in their lives and military service.
That equation is exactly what is under threat right now.
When the reservists look around the cabinet table, they see a minister like Itamar Ben-Gvir who never served in the IDF and instead spent his time in court and getting convicted of terrorist-related crimes. They see someone like Bezalel Smotrich who recently called to wipe out a Palestinian village, Arye Deri, a two-time convicted felon and United Torah Judaism leader Yitzchak Goldknopf, who represents a sector in society that does not serve in the IDF to begin with.
For people to be willing to serve their country they have to believe in its leadership. That trust is falling apart and restoring it needs to be the government’s top priority because without trust, what kind of country will we have?