Interview: Understanding The IDF Reservist Protests
Protests against a series of reforms to Israel’s judiciary system proposed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanayhu’s governing coalition have sparked weekly protests that have been ongoing for ten weeks and have even seen Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, warn of civil war. More recently, the presence of Israel Defense Force reservists in the protest movement has drawn increasing attention, following open letters by reservist members of several elite units that they will not attend regular training should the reforms pass.
Overt Defense had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Amin Tarzi, director of Middle Eastern Studies at the United States Marine Corps University’s Brute Krulak Center for Innovation and Future Warfare on the reforms proposed and their reception, and the significance of IDF reservists threatening to strike as part of the protests.
All statements and opinions here are made in a personal capacity, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Krulak Center, Marine Corps University, the United States Marine Corps or the United States government. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
What are the judicial reforms proposed by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, and how have they become so controversial?
The new Israeli government – the current government – was established in December of 2022, about three months ago. In it are established critics of the Israeli judiciary, and these individuals were appointed into very, very high levels, including the Minister of Justice, Yariv Levin, who is a member of the Likud party, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s old party, and Mr. Simcha Rothman. He was appointed the chair of the Knesset’s (the Israeli parliament) Constitution, Law and Justice Committee. By January, they proposed a legal reform that did three things:
Number one, it limits the power of the Supreme Court to strike down Knesset legislation. Number two, it limits the power of the Supreme Court to review administrative acts. Number three, it increases the influence of the executive and legislative branch over judicial appointments and reduces the power of government legal advisors.
Limiting the power of the Supreme Court is important as Israel does not really have a constitution – it is a liberal democracy without a written constitution. Since 1948, when the new state of Israel was formed, it has been ruled by what is called Basic Laws. In 1992, the Knesset passed two Basic Laws restricting its own power. Some people – I am not one of them – consider this to be a constitutional revolution, meaning that while Israel does not have a constitution, it has an incremental constitutional process. In the absence of a written constitution, the independence of the Supreme Court and judiciary becomes what most, or at least a majority of Israelis, believe safeguards the liberal democratic nature of the state of Israel. If you take the judiciary out of the equation without a written constitution, the power now rests solely on the executive and legislative bodies, which in the case of Israel, are the same, because as a parliamentary democracy, the Prime Minister is also a member of the Knesset. So you’re basically giving all of the power into the hands of whichever party or number of parties has the government.
By the way, Israel has never had a majority party. Since 1948, there has never been a party with a majority of 61 votes in the Knesset, there has always been a coalition government. The idea that critics are so fearful of is if you can create a coalition like the coalition we have, which is very right wing, and all the power is in your hands, you could actually change the way Israel is in all aspects, void of a constitution. The current president of the Israeli Supreme Court has called this an “unrestricted attack on the legal system”, and some believe this will undo Israel’s democratic movement.
The last thing I’ll say is that since 1990, criminal proceedings have been filed against one president, one prime minister who is still in jail, 12 ministers and 20 members of the Knesset. This is again, very unprecedented, and they are very open, but the judiciary is what keeps that balance. If the judiciary is limited, then people on the street, the academic side, legal side and even some members of the military believe that this will undo the liberal democratic nature of the State of Israel.
One thing that jumped out during your description is how sweeping the changes are. It does seem like the Netanyahu coalition is very confident that no future government is going to use the same powers to undo the changes they’ve done, or to outright prosecute the coalition members.
That is the fear of a lot of people – that’s why I mentioned at the end the fact that many people were convicted of criminal proceedings, some of them having been at the highest levels of government.
Those who are opposing this believe that this whole law has two dimensions:
The first is safeguarding individuals, some people even say the Prime Minister himself, who has charges not brought against him, but they are there. And also some people within the coalition right now at high levels, who actually have criminal proceedings ongoing against them. So some say the whole law is designed exactly to safeguard people like that.
The second issue that people are worried about, from what I’ve heard and read, is that Mr. Netanyahu’s party is very liberal as far as religious and social issues are concerned, and is very conservative on security issues. But the coalition has some very right-wing religious parties, and the majority of Israelis are still more secular. When you look at the statistics, the secular still make up a majority. They are not a majority, meaning they’re not more than 50 percent, but they still are about 35 percent. And they’re fearful that the law will not only safeguard wrongdoing, but will also push the country more and more towards the views of a minority which wants to make life much more restrictive on social issues, on religious issues, on freedom of the individual.
So, there are two aspects. One, what you mentioned by providing immunity to the government, and the other is it will change the very dynamics of Israel as a Jewish state and a democratic state.
How are the reservist threats to not attend drills and other forms of training significant?
I can tell you from an academic perspective from someone who has studied it – I have not talked to any of these protesting reservists – it is unprecedented. In Israel, the whole issue of safeguarding the state is almost holy. This is why those people who do not do their conscription in the Israel Defense Forces are looked down upon by the majority of society. It is a very, very important issue in Israel for people to be part of the defense of the state.
Unlike most countries, Israel relies on reservists in large part because it is a small country and everybody goes to the military except for very, very few. Reservists are kept very well trained and they are counted as part of the IDF structure. When they say they are not going, that just tells you that the objection to the proposed laws is very, very high, to the point where people are objecting by not going to something they view as their duty, which is safeguarding the security of Israel. So I have seen a lot of things in Israel where people have taken sides, but I have personally not seen people refusing to do their military duty or part because of a political issue before this.
It’s a big statement, it tells you that the fear in the minds of those who oppose this is quite real. The demonstrations show that, there are many people on the streets, but when military people do not go, I would take that as an alarm bell that there is a large segment of the country that is very uneasy about the future of their country’s liberal democratic system. They regard this bill as a direct attack against that.
On the issue of conscription, it’s also notable that a fairly significant part of the Netanyahu coalition is composed of parties representing Haredi Jews that are currently exempt from conscription.
You are putting your hand on a very important issue there – the Haredim or ultra-Orthodox were exempted from conscription at the beginning of the state of Israel for different reasons. There were very few of them, and the first Prime Minister of Israel, the late David Ben-Gurion, he decided to give them that right to study at a yeshiva because during the Holocaust, a lot of Jewish scholars were killed by the Nazis and it was good to have a group of men study the Torah and old Jewish texts. But now, of course, their numbers have grown exponentially. They are the fastest-growing demographic group in Israel, they are number one and Arabs are number two. And with that, there is resentment that they are exempt from joining the military, and now this is becoming a major issue. And yes, there is an issue that maybe after this, there will be some changes because members of that group are represented quite heavily in this current coalition.
So that would be another issue that would come up, and it will be very divisive for the Israeli population. I would say it’s as divisive if not more than the issue of the judicial reform.
With the Haredim on one side and the protesting reservists on another, it seems like it would have pretty major ramifications for Israeli civil-military relations going forwards.
Absolutely, I think you’re seeing it right now on the streets. This kind of numbers is again unprecedented, you see it in the sense of rifts in how to deal with other issues. Because Israel has stayed together in the face of a lot of adversity – when it was a foreign invasion during the 1948 War of Independence, of course everybody was together. Even in the other wars, Israeli society stuck absolutely together in ‘67 (the Six-Day War), ‘73 (Yom Kippur War). Now, this is more of an issue where external threats other than Iran are not existential. That’s the only existential threat Israel feels right now, if Iran is nuclear armed, otherwise it’s not existential.
Internally the Palestine issue is there, and all of this will have ramifications in the long run. People are not just looking at what happens today, as in the absence of a constitution, these changes are fundamental. Are they reversible? Yes, they are reversible, but you have to have a very large coalition, and that doesn’t seem to be happening because governments don’t last long and their coalitions are getting weaker and weaker. In the old days, you had the Labor party as the largest party, and then you had Likud and its predecessors getting chunks of votes. Now, it is always a coalition of many, many small parties, and many of these are fringe parties with very specific demands. For example, religious issues, the conscription issue, and that could become more divisive not just on liberal democracy, but on the civil-military relationship.
In the case of Israel, nobody has touched that. This is why I think reservists refusing to attend their training or some pilots refusing to fly is very significant. In the case of Israel, that’s extremely significant.
What is the likelihood of the Netanyahu coalition attempting to push through the reforms despite its weakness?
This may be the last chance they have. Let’s not forget, this coalition of Likud-led parties lost the elections only two years ago, and the coalition was weaker then as it was a combination of more right wing and left wing parties then, but they couldn’t hold together. At one point they were at 60 Knesset votes, meaning that they were a government without a majority. So they understand that time may not be on their side, as Israel has had five elections in the past four years. Their point of view is like “if we don’t push this through right now, we may not get another chance for a while; or if the other side comes in and gets at least 68 votes of the 120 members of the Knesset, then they may actually enact another Basic Law that blocks us”. Yes, there was a constitutional revolution in 1992, when the Knesset enacted Basic Laws limiting its power, but there is no written constitution, making changes easier compared to nations with written constitutions.
I can talk about my own country, America, where changing the constitution takes a two-thirds majority, which is very difficult to get. But Israel doesn’t even have that, so if you have a single vote over the threshold of 60, you can pass laws. And the only thing curtailing that is the Supreme Court, which is the more long-term governing body in the governing system. But if you take the Supreme Court out of it as the protesters fear, then you have the majority of power in the hands of the legislative and executive branches, which are the same in Israel. And they have control of the legislative and executive right now. If they can weaken the third one, they have a better chance to push their ideas while they are still in power.
The Netanyahu coalition has used some fairly aggressive rhetoric when condemning the reservists that have threatened to not appear for training. You don’t usually see a minister fairly unambiguously use the phrase “go to hell” in a Purim greeting.
Mr. Netanyahu also posted his own reservist ID card online, this is a very touchy issue on all sides. Perhaps the most divisive thing in Israel is those who do not serve in the military and those who renege on service, because safeguarding the security of Israel is paramount. This is a state that has always been under siege. Yes it is true that after 1967, Israel did not see itself threatened by invasions from their neighbors, and of course now with relationships established with Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, there is a sense that they don’t have a direct threat. Iran, of course, is always an issue, but the safety of Israel whatever the threat may be, is paramount. Let’s not forget, the state came out of the ashes of the Holocaust. They have seen what happened, and know that it is important to safeguard the Jewish state.
The most important thing is the reservists threatening to stop going to do their duties. The harsh words are pretty normal, if people do not serve where they are supposed to serve, they are treated pretty harshly. “You belong to the society, you have to serve it”, that’s the notion there. So people do it, people are very proud of it, and the Israeli Defense Force still is the most respected institution in the entire state of Israel. People have a respect for it, people look at it not just as a cornerstone of safeguarding Israel’s Jewishness and Jewish identity, but also its liberal democratic system.
In Israel, using harsh words in politics is not unusual. It’s a pretty straightforward country on those things, they speak their mind. I’ve been there many, many times, it is very direct. Some people say they are rude, I don’t see them as rude, but I grew up in New York City, so it’s kind of like that. Again, I have not talked to the individual who said “go to hell”, but I don’t think it’s too big of an issue.
So it’s not something truly personally directed?
Exactly, it’s not really a big deal. The big deal is that the reservists are threatening to not attend training.
Would you say that the reservists’ protests are more significant than the open letter from all former Israeli Air Force chiefs condemning the proposed reforms?
Yes, those who are right now obligated to serve and have stopped serving are more significant. When you are out of office, you can make statements. Again, reservists in Israel are not the same as many other countries. They are part of the entire IDF structure, not just in a very severe emergency. In some countries, the reservists are there in the event of a prolonged need for resupplying of people or soldiers of specific specialties. In Israel’s case, the reservists are part of the whole operational system, so when they say no, I think that is pretty significant.
What are the implications for IDF readiness if all of the protesting reservists make good on their threats to not appear for training?
If all the reservists in Israel threatened to not do their work, that’s going to be a major issue, but I don’t think we are there yet. I haven’t talked to any of them, I don’t know them, but I think this is a high end symbolic protest. At the end of the day, Israelis want their country to be safe and they understand the ramifications, so I don’t see the entire reserve force of Israel saying “no, we aren’t going to do it, we condemn the actions” and weakening the country. In my view, this is about safeguarding the country and keeping the nature of the country as a liberal democratic Jewish state, and they are trying to show that symbolically.
I don’t think Israelis are at the point where they are willing to undermine their country’s security because of this, and this is most likely what the current government is counting on. “At the end of the day, we can push this through, because the people will not go against the security of the country, so we’ll push it”. The demonstrations and train stoppages are tolerable, but not the security of the country when it has a direct challenge from Iran. So I don’t think that’s going to happen – that’s my assessment, albeit without speaking with the entire reservist population.
At least one of the open letters I’ve seen stated something like “if there is a major emergency, we will show up”.
Yes, that’s exactly the case. Most countries in the world will have reservists show up in an emergency, but those countries’ threat perception and Israel’s threat perception may be different given the history, size and animosity towards Israel since 1948, actually I would say since 1939. There is a different sense of the security aspect and I don’t think that will be compromised no matter what, even as there may be fights in the court system and other places.
Again, the reason people are so upset is that the court system has been the guardian of the liberal democratic system of Israel, making sure that wrongdoing, no matter by who, gets punished; it guarantees the rights of individuals and minorities. They see that being watered down, then they are very fearful of the future of Israel losing its liberal democratic nature. That is number one in my view.
Header image: Protesters, including IDF naval reservists, against judicial reforms proposed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu form a flotilla at the port of Haifa March 9.