Keep on bombing those Gazans, just leave the judiciary alone
“If you become dictators of this country, I will not enter the cockpit,” Lador called on the Israeli pilots to tell the government
By Yoana Gonen • Translated by Sol Salbe
There used to be a time during which, I naively believed that “Shabbat Tarbut” events, during which Jewish Israelis get together on Saturday to discuss culture and current affairs, were meant to serve senior citizens and provide them with a few hours of leisurely political conversation. It is now clear to me that this is in fact a project to assist jaded journalists: bring in all kinds of former senior officials, squeeze a “controversial” statement out of them, and lo and behold, the media and politicians have something to discuss endlessly on a slow news day.
At any rate, In Israel statements and condemnations get a lot more runs on the board than substance and actions, and statements emanating out of “Shabat Tarbut” events enable a purification orgy of condemnations lasting a whole- day-long’s worth of news broadcasts. After Moshe Ya’alon, who asserted that Israel was carrying out ethnic cleansing in Gaza, it was the turn of former State Prosecutor Moshe Lador, who said that following the renewal of the Judicial Coup legislation, pilots should stop volunteering for reserve duty.
Yesterday, everyone in the studios was unanimous that Lador had committed the cardinal sin: he raised within us an unpleasant feeling of déjà vu. “here we go again, regurgitating the October 6 discourse, and once again there’re discussions of the Judicial Coup and again discussions about whether or not reserve soldiers should report for duty. Haven’t we learnt anything?” fumed Amalya Duek on Channel 12.
This is Israel: a country where even the few who think it is legitimate to refuse to serve think it should be done because of the Judicial Coup laws — not as an act of resistance to the mass killing of civilians.
But you can’t really go back to October 6. The months since then have been littered with the bodies of hundreds of Israelis and tens of thousands of Palestinians, and the “apolitical” army that reporters fantasise about is mired up to its neck in horrific war crimes. This is Israel: a country where even the few who think it is legitimate to refuse to serve think that it should be done because of the Judicial Coup laws — and not as an act of resistance to the mass killing of civilians.
As far as Lador and his ilk are concerned, the change in the composition of the committee for the appointment of judges justifies stopping volunteering for reserve duty, but pilots who bomb the tents of displaced persons and kill dozens of children as if they were “collateral damage” should continue to do so without asking questions. The phrase “an order with a black flag flying over it” [dating back to the 1956 Kafr Kassem Massacre] has never been so confusing.
Instead of at least legitimising Lador’s minimalist vision of refusal, the pitiful opposition immediately jumped on the speeding condemnation bandwagon. Fortunately for them, like Deus Ex Mechina, a video of former Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef surfaced out of nowhere, in which he elucidated that the ultra-Orthodox “are not allowed to go to the army, even those who are neither studying nor working.” Politicians and commentators could now participate in the sanctified ritual of “condemning the extremists on both sides.” “The alliance of draft dodgers from here and there,” as former minister Shai Piron put it in an interview with Oded Ben-Ami.
In this way, the government’s opponents provide legitimacy for a pointless war that Netanyahu is using to fortify his rule and promote the Judicial Coup. “If you become dictators of this country, I will not enter the cockpit,” Lador called on the pilots to tell the government. I hope that the residents of Gaza derive some comfort from the knowledge that those who kill them are willing to continue doing so only if no one touches one of [Solicitor-General] Gali Baharv-Miara’s hair.
