TEL AVIV (Dispatches) -- Warning of looming disaster, hundreds of officers and non-commissioned officers affiliated with the Zionist military’s elite Unit 8200, dubbed “the central intelligence collection unit of the Intelligence Corps,” have threatened to stop volunteering for reserve duty should the regime’s judicial overhaul pass into law, Haaretz reported on Tuesday.
In an open letter, the reservists cautioned that they had “recognize[d] a troubling cluster of tell-tale signs that rise to a real fear for the integrity and security” of the occupying regime of Israel.
Hardline prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition is pursuing legislation that would permit the Knesset to override supreme court decisions by a very slim majority of 61 votes in the 120-seat parliament, as well as legislation to tip the balance on the judicial appointments committee in favor of politicians.
Critics, including many military veterans, have countered that such a plan would undermine the independence of the judiciary and effectively subordinate the courts to the regime.
Warning of “damage to Israel’s economy, its stability and its image in the world,” they stated that “the last time Israel behaved like this, a great disaster occurred....” They said that they felt bound to “blow the horns and warn against the ‘Yom Kippur’ of Israeli society” — a reference to how the 1973 Yom Kippur War took Israeli leaders by surprise due to an intelligence failure.
“And because of this, the duty of personal warning and the internal moral imperative lead us to announce, with a heavy but whole heart… [that] if the so-called ‘legal reform’ legislation passes in its entirety, without consultation and in the absence of broad consensus, we will not continue to volunteer for reserve service.”
The military fears that protests against the coalition’s judicial reform plans could result in a reservist crisis – particularly for the air force, which relies heavily on reserve personnel, and in intelligence units.
Addressing the issue for the first time in public, chief of staff Herzl Halevi said at a graduation ceremony for a military officer’s course on Thursday that “a dispute is rocking Israeli society” and is spilling over into the military’s reserve forces.
Tuesday’s letter came only days after dozens of reserve soldiers and officers serving in Israel’s Military Intelligence research division declared Sunday that they would no longer report for service if the laws pushed by Netanyahu’s cabinet are passed.
“If this dangerous legislation is approved, we will not continue to volunteer for reserve service,” they wrote in a letter sent to ministers and military intelligence brass.
The week began with two retaliatory attacks on Sunday and Monday that claimed the lives of three Zionists. The first attack, near the West Bank Palestinian village of Hawara, was followed by a rampage by Zionist settlers on Palestinian homes in the village in which a Palestinian was martyred and Palestinian homes and cars were torched. As the military continued its search for the attackers and its investigation into the settler attacks, officers took time out to address the threat that reservists could stop showing up for reserve duty.
Halevi ordered the senior military command to summon top-ranking reservists to discuss the matter with them and to hear them out. On Monday, the head of the Intelligence Corps’ research division, Brig. Gen. Amit Saar, spoke with a number of officers from the division, and similar discussions were held in the air force, in Unit 8200 and with special operations forces.
During a press conference last week, Israel’s former war minister Moshe Ya’alon said: “This is the most important war in my life. We’re in the midst of a legislative process which is like a D9 armored bulldozer that overruns the judiciary. It’s clear that this is a coup. We’re in an economic crisis, and we’ll soon enter a security crisis.”