Refusal to serve in the Israel Defense Forces reserves in an era of anti-democratic judicial reform

ABSTRACT

In Israel, most citizens are obligated to serve in the military for a mandatory period and subsequently in the reserve forces for about 21–45 days per year up to the age of 44. Many veterans continue to serve in the reserves for even longer periods. However, uncharacteristically, during 2023, reservists were linked to the social protest in Israel. The ever-widening public protest in Israel was unprecedented. Every Saturday night, from January 2023 until the War of October 7th began, 5–10% of the Israeli population headed out to demonstrate in the streets of various cities and regions against the anti-democratic legislation that was under consideration or had been passed. Among the protesters were many citizens serving in the reserve forces. These opponents of government policy voiced their protest, saying loud and clear that if the legislation continued, they would not serve, unless a war would erupt; indeed, many of them had already quit the reserves only to rejoin when the October War started. And thus, without intending to do so, the army has become a political player in the political struggle currently taking place in Israel. The wide-ranging protest in Israel and the massive number of reservists who had voiced a decision not to show up for reserve duty are indications of an unprecedented social phenomenon that is worthy of scholarly attention. How do we, as critical scholars, put an identity on the military? How do we interpret situations in which the military is more democratic than the government?

KEYWORDS:

• Military
• IDF
• protest
• democracy
• refusal
• demonstrations

‘The [judicial overhaul] legislation, which allows the government to act in an extremely unreasonable manner, will harm the security of the State of Israel, will break the trust and violate our consent to continue risking our lives – and will very sadly leave us with no choice but to refrain from volunteering for reserve duty’, a letter penned by 1,142 reserve officers read. It was sent to Knesset Members, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi and IAF Commander Tomer Bar .¹

(Kubovich and Harel 2023)

In general, militaries may be equated with militarism, hierarchies, and armed conflicts, while parliaments, particularly in democratic regimes, are associated with civic ideas of deliberation, the rule of law, and the separation of powers. In 2023, Israel witnessed a political crisis in which these presumed associations were shattered. The above letter should be read with the understanding that military service is a meaningful part of the social life of most Israelis. Serving in combat roles and in elite units in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is considered prestigious and deserving of esteem in the public discourse and in social relations. In Israel, as a state that is often involved in armed conflicts, offensive and defensive alike, Israelis are obligated to serve in the military for a mandatory period of about two and a half years (varies for the different roles) and subsequently in the reserve forces for about 21–45 days per year up to the age of 44. Many veterans choose to continue and volunteer to serve in the reserves for even longer periods (Lander, Huss, and Harel-Shalev 2021; Ben-Shalom et al 2023). In 2023, the above letter and the massive number of reservists who objected to continuing to serve in reserve duty, as a protest against the anti-democratic moves by the government, were indications of an unprecedented social phenomenon that is worthy of scholarly attention. The Israeli political scene manifests populist trends that are currently not unfamiliar in other societies, and the Israeli case might therefore provide a hint of how future regimes might act in other states, affecting the interrelations between politics and the military.

The above-described social resistance and the refusal to volunteer to the IDF reserves, were the direct outcome of recent moves by Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition to implement a drastic reform of the judiciary and well as other state systems in a process that has come to be known as a ‘legislative blitz’. The coalition claimed that the Supreme Court has too often acted against far-right interests, for instance, by preventing some construction of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank or by striking down certain privileges granted to Ultra-Orthodox Jews, such as exemption from military service for the purpose of Torah (Bible) learning.

The legislative steps spearheaded by the current Israeli government have significant implications for society, for the regime, and for the entire system of government. Laws that have been passed are already affecting various groups in society, including women, members of the LGBTQ community, and Palestinian citizens. The legislative overhaul has undermined social solidarity and the public’s trust in the government. In the few months preceding the October War, a long list of bills designed to change the rules of the game in the Israeli political system sparked a protest movement on the part of hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens, but it seemed that the government was unwilling to compromise and insisted on keeping the legislation on track.² The War of October 2023 stopped the legislation, but the coalition forces have declared their determination to continue the process after the fighting will have ended.

For those unfamiliar with inner political developments in Israel, it is important to note that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing a number of legal charges. Parties of the political left and centre had therefore come to the conclusion that he is not trustworthy and not fit to lead and hence had decided not to join a Netanyahu-led coalition. Under these circumstances and so as to maintain his role in the Israeli multi-party system, Netanyahu chose to base his coalition on very conservative political entities. He is therefore caught between maintaining his coalition, which includes far-right and Ultra-Orthodox parties, which have their own reasons for wanting to restrict the powers of the Supreme Court, and appeasing the fury of millions of liberal-minded Israelis who oppose giving the government more control over the judiciary and turning Israel into an illiberal religious state. Israel was never a perfect ‘liberal democracy’, and the current government is pushing the country closer to a regime that is similar to the regimes currently ruling Hungary and Poland in terms of concentrating power in the hands of the government and in terms of establishing illiberal trends regarding gender issues and judicial and public policies. The global challenges to – and the decline of – liberal polities have been accompanied by a growing dominance of conservative values and political agendas manifested in the growing appeal of conservative political ideologies, far right ideologies and the spread of fundamentalist movements. In this global trend, Israel is not an exception; it is going through a process of severe political change.

In this short encounter piece, I do not intend to survey political actions or make any comparisons between anti-democratic legislation processes in Israel to those in other states, but rather to highlight both the reaction of military veterans and reservists to these actions and also the relations between the military and society in Israel. These linkages could presage possible future developments in other societies worldwide. In addition, they raise questions regarding the role of the military within the state. How do we, as critical scholars, put an identity on the military? Is it a part of the state? Is it an autonomic body? How do we interpret situations in which the military is more democratic than the government?

As mentioned above, the ever-widening public protest of 2023 was unprecedented in Israel – and indeed in any other state. Every Saturday night, from January 2023 until the start of the War of October 7th, 5–10% of the Israeli population headed out to demonstrate in the streets of various cities and regions against the judicial coup. Among the protesters were many people serving in the reserve forces – some still doing their mandatory reserve duty and others who were no longer obligated to serve but volunteered to do so. These opponents of government policy voiced their protest, saying loud and clear that if the legislation continued, they would not serve unless war would erupt. Many of them had indeed already quit the reserves, only to return at the beginning of the war. And thus, without intending to do so, the army (or at least parts of the army) has become a political player in the political struggle currently taking place in Israel.

Israeli society sanctifies national security and attributes far more significance to it than to most civilian matters. Therefore, it is of particular interest to examine the interaction between the army and society with respect to the current socio-political debates. Moreover, the centrality of the army in Israeli society awards special status to veterans and high-ranking military officers. The opinions of legal experts, political science researchers, and feminist movements criticizing the judicial reform may not be received with great public interest, but criticisms voiced by veterans and generals generate both interest and impact. One reason for this ‘imbalance’ is the fact that military service is considered an important part of citizenship and the political capital of military qualifications transfers into the civilian sphere, particularly in the case of high-ranking officers, such as former IDF Chiefs of Staff and heads of Secret Service organizations. Many of them have indeed voiced their concerns publicly – in the media and at public demonstrations (Kotev 2023). For instance, Nadav Argaman, former Head of the General Security Services [known as the Shin Bet] stated his objections to the reform in a TV interview: ‘I am serving the kingdom, I am not serving the king’ (Uvda 2023). He is not an exception; many generals have spoken up in this manner.

Refusal to serve in the military is not a new phenomenon in Israel (Harel-Shalev and Daphna-Tekoah 2020), but it is still considered to be quite extreme and socially unacceptable. Therefore, it was a surprise to a well-known military analyst, Harel, (2023), to hear that recently retired Generals and Lieutenant Generals were agreeing with calls for disobedience and refusal to serve in the reserves: At any other time, such actions would be considered taboo in army circles. This shift in the position of senior military figures may be attributed to a lack of trust in the current government – its considerations and motivations. More and more threats of refusal to serve were voiced (from February 2023) by reserve pilots and soldiers serving in special operations, cyber, and other elite units. At the same time, it became clear in army circles that the anger and frustrations generated by the political situation and the constitutional crisis, alongside the anticipated load of reserve service that is currently being required, would add silent refusal to publicly voiced refusal: Soldiers who would not necessarily engage in public protest would find ways to avoid serving in the reserves. During the entire period of protest, this topic of silent refusal did not attract much public interest, although thousands of reservists serving in prestigious units had stopped volunteering due to the judicial overhaul.

The call to refuse to serve in the reserves increased when the Prime Minister announced in March 2023 his intention to dismiss the Minister of Defense, Yoav Galant, after the latter expressed his opinion that the speedy legislation that the government was promoting required a reassessment, due to the harm it was causing to Israel’s military readiness. In fact, many members of the general public who had been indecisive regarding the reform chose to join in when reservists voiced their protest to Galant’s dismissal on what appeared to be baseless grounds. Members of the coalition and government ministers reacted to the reservists’ massive refusal to serve by calling them ‘cowards’ and ‘anarchists’. Since many of the reservists had seen active battle in various military operations and wars and most of the ministers had not served in the military for various reasons, these designations were received by the protestors and the public with contempt.

It must be stressed that the scenario described above is very different from other refusals in that the massive number of ‘refuseniks’ [those refusing to serve] is unprecedented. Moreover, the 2023 refusals are different from the familiar pacifistic refusals. They are also different from the ‘selective refusal’ of people who object to a specific operation or a specific policy, such as the occupation and military control in Judea and Samaria, on the one hand, and of those who oppose dismantling Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria, on the other hand. A very different narrative can be identified in the many testimonies of the current refuseniks, one that indicates total obligation to the country and to the military, but at the same time disagrees with the current government. For instance, one of the combat pilots who announced that he would not serve in the reserves said the following:

We are not disobeying an order, we are signaling that we will not serve under a dictatorial regime […] somebody is trying to change the basic contract under which we enlisted and were willing to risk our lives. Our heart is torn just by thinking about not defending our country. The current phase entails only […] refraining from training, not from operational activity. Our action is authentic and is designed to say: ‘This is a hard line, stop, or everything will collapse’.

Yehoshua (2023)

These words teach us that the protest does not undermine the sense of obligation to the country. Furthermore, it does not necessarily challenge Israel’s policy on any military front. Rather, it is a call to hold onto democracy and its main features: the rule of law, a government free of corruption, free elections, civil rights, and separation of the branches of government. Many of the reservists indicated that they had served under left-wing governments, centre-dominated governments and right-wing governments and they had often disagreed with government policies, but they had never refused to serve, since there is an unwritten understanding that soldiers defend the country no matter what. But now, it is a different ball game in which the rules are twisted. When viewed in the context of the wider political and social debate, refusal to serve in the reserves becomes an even more complex issue coloured by the exemption of the Ultra-Orthodox from military service (thereby increasing the burden of military duty on other sectors of the population) and by the coalition’s actions in allocating a significant portion of the state’s budget to population groups who do not serve in the military.

The protest did not start immediately the government was sworn in, but only with the commencement of the legislative blitz. The protests have certainly slowed the pace of the legislation. It is impossible to deny the impact of the reservists’ protest on the public agenda and on the army’s internal cohesiveness.

In countries with dictatorial regimes, soldiers who disobey rulers’ orders often receive wide international recognition (Neu 2022) and, at times even, praise. Nonetheless, many of them have paid a heavy price in that they have been ostracized or excluded from society, and some have even paid with their lives. Israel, as of early October 2023, was (still) not a dictatorship, but the legislative blitz and the government’s underhanded opportunism are ever present. A soldier, naturally, cannot decide for him/herself at each and every moment if a particular step the government is taking is appropriate or inappropriate and act accordingly. Moreover, usually in militaries, generals are not supposed to interfere with political decisions but rather to present strategic or tactical alternatives to each crisis or conflict. But in times of extreme measures, the rules of the game change, even for the military. It seems that Israeli society must remain on guard, just as senior figures in the defence forces must remain on guard – they are considered to be ‘the responsible adults’ in this political game, in which extremists are trying to hijack democracy. On the one hand, the army is part of the state, a state institution by any name; on the other hand – due to the mandatory draft – it is part of society, since it is comprised of individuals whose willingness to enlist is based on an unwritten contract between them and a democratic state. In Israel, the boundaries between the military and society are often blurred, particularly with regard to reservists who are both soldiers and civilians. The current government of 2022–2024 threatens to change the rules of the game, and for the time being, it seems that the tension between the government and the opposing forces, including the reservists, continues.

In the face of political processes of change into populist politics and the intensification of far-right politics in many countries worldwide, scholars of militaries and critical security studies should ask themselves whether militaries will construct and secure newly evolving regimes or whether will they question the suitability of such regimes: How should we react to the attempts of Hungary’s leader to replace the leadership of the military (Simon 2023)? Do we want to see militaries and veterans involved in shaping societies in the near future? These questions should occupy the minds of critical security scholars and those actors for whom democracy is close to their hearts and minds.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. IAF – Israel Air Force.

2. For a list of the 200 bills proposed by members of the coalition during the Knesset’s past sessions, see Maanit and Shpigel (2023).