Security concerns could bring Israel's summer of discontent to an end

Unfortunately, the security argument no longer seems to have the power it deserves. And the blame for that should be placed – at least in part - on people who ought to know better.

When Israeli Air Force pilots and intelligence officers started saying they would stop doing their reserve duty if even a softened version of just one part of judicial reform would pass – and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir didn’t help there, calling the bill in question the “salad course that builds up an appetite” for the rest of the meal – one might expect that the former heads of Israel’s security apparatus would discourage them, pointing out that they can protest all they like, but Israel’s security needs to come first.

 Instead, IDF ex-chiefs of staff like Ehud Barak, Dan Halutz and Moshe Ya’alon, as well as other former members of the army’s upper echelons, supported calls to refuse to serve.

Everyone has a right to their political opinion, even the former top brass of the IDF. But when people start pulling military rank to try to force their view - a view that lost in the last election - then the other side starts throwing around words like “coup” or “putsch”.

And that’s when the messages from people like former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen and former national security adviser Meir Ben Shabbat - among Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s closest allies for many years - start to fall on deaf ears, because the right feels like the left is trying to use its generals to dictate policy.

Cohen and Ben Shabbat did not speak out against the judicial reform or Netanyahu, but they called for the process to be paused. Their main concern, expressed in op-eds in newspapers in the last week, was about how the political debate has been causing divisions in the nation, and especially in the national security establishment.

“Iran constitutes the central threat to our security and the debate and the disagreement are endangering the resilience of the state of Israel in the immediate future,” Cohen said.

“Therefore, I call to leave the IDF out of the debates and to stop the legislative process in order to facilitate immediate dialogue between the different camps." 

Shabbat pointed out that Hezbollah is saying that Israel is on the cusp of civil war and views this moment as an opportunity to take advantage of those divisions to attack.

As such, Shabbat wrote that "the representatives of the camps must enter talks to arrive at a consensus. Dialogue which will take place with the recognition of the suspicions which have taken root within each side, with good faith, respect and above all else, responsibility".

Perhaps an attack from Hezbollah can wake the politicians and professional protest-leaders from their zero-sum game attitude going forward. Hopefully, it will take less than that.

מרגש:
תחנת נבון בירושלים לפני זמן קצר. תומכי רפורמה עולים, מתנגדי רפורמה יורדים. בדרך לוחצים ידיים.
כולנו אחים.
לילה טוב!
(קרדיט: @LifeRivlin) pic.twitter.com/mW8Mzcu7iI

— Danny Danon 🇮🇱 דני דנון (@dannydanon) July 23, 2023

A video posted on social media Sunday night and immediately went viral in Israel can give us some hope.

The video was filmed on an evening in which protesters against judicial reform filled the streets surrounding the Knesset and demonstrators supporting the policies packed into Tel Aviv’s Kaplan Interchange and surrounding streets, the other side’s usual stomping grounds. It shows escalators – two going up, two going down - crammed with people waving Israeli flags. On one side, kippot and headscarves. On the other, bare heads and t-shirts that say “democracy” on them. Then, a few people start reaching over from one elevator to the other, shaking hands.

The message people took from this was that some Israelis still have not forgotten that we are all brothers, despite all of our differences and no matter how passionate we may be about them. The popularity of the video online and the fact that people on both sides of the metaphorical aisle tweeted the same message about it shows how hungry average Israelis are for a return to a more united and cohesive society and a more normal tenor of debate.

There is no doubt that the judicial issue and related protests are a huge story whose outcome has the potential to have a massive influence on every Israeli.

That being said, there's a tendency in the Israeli media to behave as though it is the only thing happening in the country.

Elyashiv Reichner is a columnist in religious-Zionist publications who writes about life in Israel's periphery, the areas far from the wealthy coastal area or the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem corridor that get little media attention when they're not under attack.

Last week, on one of the big "days of disruption", Reichner, who lives in Yerucham in the Negev, had to drive to Israel's north. None of the roads on his way were blocked, and at most, there were a few handfuls of people waving flags at the sides of the street.

"Life mostly flowed as usual," Reichner wrote in the right-wing Makor Rishon weekly. "Facing the relative peace in the periphery, I asked myself: What better reflects reality? Are the mass protests in [Tel Aviv] the real view of Israel today, or maybe the quiet that I found in the last two weeks in Ma'alot, in the Golan Heights, in Lod, in Beersheba and in Yerucham more authentically express Israel of summer 2023?"

Though I live in central Israel, I have asked myself this question as well, feeling a sharp dissonance between my work and my life, which has gone on as normal. My husband takes our kids to camp in the morning and goes to his high-tech job almost entirely unimpeded by protests, despite getting off the train in central Tel Aviv. I go to appointments, pick up the kids in the afternoon, make them dinner and read them bedtime stories – on the same day as reading and writing about it being a day of disruption.

I'm sure that some will say most Israelis are being dangerously complacent by continuing their life as normal while the country is transformed into fascist dictatorship. 

Reichner, for his part, wrote: "This is not a call to ignore and certainly not for apathy... We must listen to the protest, but at the same time, we can wonder if we've lost all proportions and the relative routine in the periphery at this time is what actually better reflects the appropriate treatment of these events." 

He suggested to his friends who oppose the reform to take a deep breath, step away from social media and get out of central Israel.

The same recommendation goes for the government’s supporters. Having eaten their salad, as Ben-Gvir put it, it won't hurt to take the Knesset’s lengthy recess to go on a diet and forgo the other courses. They now have more than two months to consider if the cost of full-scale judicial reform outweighs its benefits. Perhaps some, like Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, will have greater success convincing Netanyahu to reach a hand out to the other side of the escalator. If for nothing else, then for Israel’s security.