Former prosecutor Moshe Lador on Saturday encouraged Israeli Air Force pilots to no longer volunteer for reserve service if the government revives its highly controversial plan to overhaul the justice system, as the Minister of Justice Justice Yariv Levin expressed his wish.
Speaking at a current affairs event in Beersheba on Saturday, Lador said the refusal to volunteer for service was a “legitimate tool” to prevent the government from transforming Israel “from a democracy into a dictatorship.”
“Pilots who have completed their compulsory service and are now serving on a voluntary basis have not only the right, but also, in my opinion, the obligation to say: ‘If this is the country you aspire to, that you will created by force and intimidation and of which you are going to be the dictators, I will not enter the cockpit and fly this plane because I don’t have to,’” he said.
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He added that he did not view such refusal to serve “as political interference,” but as a legitimate method to delay a “totally wrong” process.
Lador was a strong opponent of the radical reform program that sought to strip power from the courts and the attorney general and weaken the role of the judiciary as a counterweight to government power. Levin’s proposed overhaul led to widespread social and political unrest, with mass protests held across the country for much of 2023, until war broke out in Gaza following the pogrom perpetrated by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas on October 7, 2023 on Israeli soil.
At the height of the 2023 protests, hundreds of reservists signed declarations that they would no longer report for voluntary reserve service in protest against the government’s advancing plans to shrink the judiciary.
Israel’s Attorney General Moshe Lador defends his action during a press conference, July 10, 2012. (Uri Lenz/FLASH90)
Lador’s comments drew strong condemnation from the coalition and opposition, as well as from Israeli army chief of staff Lt. Gen. Herzl Halevi. The latter declared that the IDF “must stay out of any political controversy”, especially during the difficult period that Israel’s national security is currently going through.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Lador’s remarks deserved condemnation “at all levels of the political spectrum.” Advocating refusal in times of war “crosses a red line that endangers democracy and undermines our future,” Netanyahu said. He called on Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara to “take immediate action against this dangerous phenomenon,” indicating that he wanted to take legal action against Lador.
Interior Minister Moshe Arbel also called for an investigation into him. Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, for his part, said that Lador “wants to inflict another October 7 on us” and suggested that he be arrested and interrogated to serve as an example.
Defense Minister Israel Katz said Lador’s rhetoric “harms state security” and that refusal to serve “cannot be accepted under any circumstances.”
Israeli reservists sign a refusal of service declaration to protest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government’s plan to overhaul Israel’s justice system, in Tel Aviv, July 19, 2023. (Ohad Zwigenberg/AP)
Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, formerly very critical of the government’s handling of the war and the program to overhaul the judicial system, denounced Lador’s statements as “irresponsible”, which deserve to be “unequivocally condemned”.
“Saying such things would have been reckless, even before October 7,” he wrote on the social network
On the other side of the political spectrum, former IDF chief of staff and ex-Defense Minister Benny Gantz, who now leads the opposition HaMahane HaMamlahti party, argued that the threats of refusal “bring us back to October 6 [2023] » and that such behavior should be prohibited.
Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett also spoke out, declaring that “the refusal to serve in the ranks of the IDF is never legitimate.”
President Isaac Herzog also issued a harsh rebuke and warned that while democracy protects the right to protest and freedom of expression, “calling for refusal to serve is unjustifiable.”
“Anyone who says otherwise is harming the security of the State of Israel,” he said, calling for people to stay away from the “divisive and dangerous discourse that preceded October 7.”
In recent weeks, as Levin has called for a revival of controversial bills stalled by protests and now suspended due to the war against the Palestinian terror group Hamas, Herzog has expressed deep concern about a number of bills which, according to him, “would affect the democratic foundations [d’Israël] ».
He previously described Levin’s plans as a danger to Israeli democracy.
Justice Minister Yariv Levin speaking during a Knesset plenary session, December 4, 2024. (Chaïm Goldberg/Flash90)
The issue of planned reforms came to the fore again on Thursday when the High Court of Justice ordered Levin to hold a vote in the judges’ selection commission to appoint a new president of the Supreme Court, which he has refused to do so for over a year due to his desire to appoint a conservative to the position – a move for which he does not have the necessary votes.
The legislative measure to change the composition of this commission, which would have given the government decision-making power, was perhaps the most radical and controversial part of Levin’s overhaul program, which he himself admitted by subsequently that it would have undermined the separation of powers.
Levin reacted furiously to the court’s order on Thursday, accusing the judges of Israel’s highest court of turning into “dictatorial leaders” who “trample on the people’s choice.”
He said it was now essential to decide “once and for all” whether or not to restrict judicial power.
