Israeli Air Force commander Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar has vowed to thwart renewed attempts to inject partisan politics into the military
“The voices of division have recently been raising their heads again,” Bar told subordinates during a meeting last week, the country’s Channel 12 News broadcaster reported on Saturday. “I am very determined not to let politics infiltrate the Air Force this time,” he added.
Bar said the IAF responded to the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre “with full operational capability.” However, if the attack had taken place later, “the capability of the force might have been compromised,” he continued.
On Dec. 14, former Israeli State Attorney Moshe Lador urged IAF pilots to stop reporting for voluntary duty if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government revives its judicial reform agenda.
Speaking at a current affairs program in the Beersheva Performing Arts Center, Lador claimed that refusing Air Force 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 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.
Lador’s remarks came after Levin signaled his wish to renew the judicial reform, 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 Jan. 16.
In response to Lador’s words, Netanyahu urged “all ends of the political spectrum” to condemn the phenomenon of refusals to serve during wartime, which he said “endanger democracy and undermine our future.”
Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi stressed that the army “must remain outside any political controversy, in particular during these days, when the security challenges are so tangible.”
Last year, thousands of IDF reservists threatened to refuse to serve due to the 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 ability to respond to threats.