Former Israeli State Attorney Moshe Lador over the weekend urged Air Force pilots to stop reporting for volunteer duty if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government revives its judicial reform agenda.
Speaking at the Shabbat-Culture current affairs program in the Beersheva Performing Arts Center on Saturday, Lador claimed that refusing IAF volunteer duty service could be a “legitimate tool” to stop the government from turning Israel “from a democracy into a dictatorship.
“Pilots who have completed their compulsory service and now serve on a voluntary basis are not only allowed, but in my opinion, are obligated to say, ‘If that’s the country you’re striving for and are going to create through force and bullying, and are going to be the dictators of, I won’t enter the cockpit and fly this plane because I don’t have to,'” he said.
Lador added that he didn’t see the refusals to serve as political interference “at all” but as a legitimate method of halting an “entirely wrong” process.
Lador is a vocal opponent of Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s program to reform the judiciary, which was shelved after Hamas attacked the Jewish state on Oct. 7, 2023, and wars broke out on the country’s borders.
The State Attorney’s Office is subordinate to the attorney general and represents the State of Israel and the governmental authorities in various courts and tribunals.
On Saturday, Levin signaled his wish to renew the judicial reform effort, saying that while the government froze its plans in response to the Hamas invasion, the Supreme Court “decided to exploit this and continue its takeover of powers from the Knesset and government.
“They left us no choice. It cannot continue like this. We too have rights,” the minister stated in a Facebook post, writing after the Supreme Court, sitting as the High Court of Justice, ordered him to call a vote in the Judicial Selection Committee for a Supreme Court president by Dec. 16.
In response to Lador’s words, Netanyahu urged “all ends of the political spectrum” to condemn the phenomenon of refusals during wartime, which he said “endanger democracy and undermine our future.”
The prime minister also called on Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara to take “immediate action against this dangerous phenomenon.”
Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi stressed that the military “must remain outside any political controversy, in particular during these days, when the security challenges are so tangible.”
Defense Minister Israel Katz likewise argued that Lador’s call “harms the security of the state” and that refusal to report for reserve duty “cannot be accepted under any circumstances.”
Benny Gantz, a former IDF chief and defense minister who now heads the opposition National Unity Party, said threatening refusal “takes us back to October 6” and that such rhetoric should remain “out of bounds.”
President Isaac Herzog said that while democracy includes free speech and the right to protest, urging IDF refusal “harms the security of the State of Israel.” The head of state urged all parties to refrain from “the divisive and dangerous discourse that preceded October 7.”
Last year, thousands of IDF reservists threatened to refuse to serve due to the government’s now-shelved judicial reform proposals.
Some 11,000 reservists, including 1,000 Air Force personnel, said they would refuse to serve in protest of the reform agenda, raising warnings about serious damage to the IDF’s readiness to respond to threats.
While Halevi at the time described the judicial reform debate as “legitimate,” he emphasized that the military’s role was to defend the state and allow disputes to occur “under safe conditions.”
In March 2023, Netanyahu described soldiers’ refusal to report for duty as an existential threat, saying it “threatens the foundation of our existence, and it must have no place in our ranks.”