The picture is colorful. Dozens of people dressed in military green T-shirts blocking the entrance to the Kirya, the headquarters of the Israeli armed forces in Tel-Aviv. The demonstrators are mostly army reservists opposed to the judicial reform promoted by Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition. Some of them are intertwined with plastic tubes to form a human chain that is more difficult to dismantle. The scene is completed with some of them lying on the ground and others chaining themselves to the columns of the entrance, amid a deployment of police who, however, do not try to stop the staging.
This was one of the initial postcards of the so-called “day of disruption and resistance” in which, for the second consecutive Tuesday, tens of thousands of Israelis organized protests against the progress of the law of reasonableness, one of the projects that aims to reduce the Supreme Court’s power of review against the Government’s decisions.
Specifically, the proposal presented by Netanyahu and his partners seeks to make it impossible for judges to strike down government measures for considering them “unreasonable”, an action that, for opponents of the reform, would mean damage to the balance of powers that governs Israel, since there is no Constitution.
This controversial initiative, approved in the first instance and in preparation for two final votes in Parliament, is what has revived the protest movement, which had subsided (though not stopped, in 29 weeks) when Netanyahu went put a stop to the judicial reform projects at the end of last March to start a dialogue with the opposition.
Like that time, at the head of the reactivated social outcry are the reservists of the Israeli forces, many of them agglutinated in the Brothers and Sisters in Arms block, who have multiplied the threats not to report for their voluntary service if the Executive continues its judicial changes.
According to an Israeli media count, around 4,000 reservists have signed public letters declaring their intention not to serve. Among them are 400 volunteers from the Sayeret Matkal elite commando unit, of which Netanyahu himself was a part. There are also about 200 aircraft pilots, 90 administrative, 50 air traffic control operators and 40 drone operators.
This rebellion touches a sensitive nerve in Israel, where military service is mandatory for almost the entire population and guaranteeing the security of the State is a unanimous value, and if the phenomenon continues to grow, it may affect the functioning of the forces armed forces, which have a small permanent staff and draw on reservists for larger operations.
“Reservists do not refuse to serve. Those who do are over 40 years old, have already completed their mandatory service and are now volunteers. And they do it because they consider that they cannot serve a Government that is putting democracy at risk”, explains a member of Brothers and Sisters in Arms, while participating in a march in front of the Supreme Court in Jerusalem. Sarai, a young law student, describes the refusal of the volunteers as a “good decision” because “it does not represent a real threat to Israel’s security”.
But even the Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, who pointed out yesterday that “we are not allowed to damage” the armed forces “in the name of any political opinion” does not agree with her; nor the Chief of Staff, Herzi Halevi, who warned that if the reservists do not show up “they endanger the security of the State”.
But apart from the rejection of the reform, Finkelstein – herself a reservist, although “not a combat one” – reveals that she also hesitates to show up, because “like many Israelis, I realized that the values of democracy collide with the occupation” in the Palestinian territories. “I don’t know if I can continue in the name of security, which is actually job security.”
In any case, the demonstrators promise to intensify and diversify the protests, which yesterday also reached the stock exchange, the headquarters of the main Israeli trade union, rabbinical courts and train stations in several cities. For the next few days, the leaders of the movement have called a march on foot from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem, while the Association of Doctors of Israel will lead a two-hour strike today in non-essential services.
“We are the last line of resistance. Protesting is the last thing left for us, because no one is doing anything to stop the Government”, says a young Israeli of Uruguayan parents who immigrated to Israel to escape the last dictatorship. “Now we see this madness. We hope that this will not happen again here.”
