Former state attorney sparks storm for telling IDF reserve pilots not to serve

Moshe Lador had said air force reservists shouldn’t fly if the judicial overhaul process restarts.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Israel’s top leaders from across the political spectrum and the army slammed ex-state attorney Moshe Lador’s call for air force reservists to refuse to fly if the judicial overhaul process restarts.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that disobeying a call to serve during wartime “crosses a red line that endangers democracy and undermines our future.”

Both he and Justice Minister Yariv Levin asked Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara to “take immediate action.”

“Calling for insubordination during normal times and even more so in times of war is a clear and serious violation of the law,” Levin wrote in his letter to Baharav-Miara on Saturday night.

Considering Lador’s status as someone “who was responsible for determining prosecution policy in the country” and “the concern that in the absence of enforcement of the law, the phenomenon of incitement to refusal and refusal itself will spread,” Levin said the attorney general had to quickly investigate the former senior official, who retired in 2013.

President Isaac Herzog labeled the demand as being “off-limits.” “Anyone who says otherwise harms the security of the State of Israel,” he added.

Top defense officials were also quick to condemn Lador.

Defense Minister Yisrael Katz said that “disobedience of any kind cannot be accepted under any circumstances,” while his predecessor, Yoav Gallant, said that such a statement by someone who had held “such a senior public position…harms the security of the state” and Lador must therefore be put on trial.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi called for an end to any calls for refusal to serve or failure to report for duty, saying that the IDF “must remain outside any political controversy, especially these days, when security challenges are so tangible.”

Lador had addressed an event in Beersheba earlier on Saturday, where he bluntly said, “Pilots who have completed their compulsory service and now serve on a voluntary basis are not only allowed but, in my opinion, practically obligated to say, ‘If that’s the kind of country you’re striving for and are going to create through aggressiveness and bullying and turn into dictators of… I won’t enter the cockpit and fly this plane.’”

This was a “legitimate tool” to stop the government, which he deemed completely “wrong” in trying to curb the power of an unelected judiciary to overturn Knesset laws and government decisions, an issue that brought hundreds of thousands of protestors to the streets in the year before the Hamas-led invasion of Israel last October 7 that sparked the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.

Leaders of the Opposition joined the many government ministers and MKs who also condemned Lador, including National Unity head Benny Gantz, Yesh Atid chief Yair Lapid, and Israel Beiteinu head Avigdor Liberman.

“I am against all refusals and all evasion from IDF [service],” Lapid stated. However, he blamed the government for “dragging us back…to the days of the judicial revolution that brought us our greatest national disaster in our history.”

Documents found in Gaza before Oct. 7, 2023, showed that Hamas leaders had taken the mass protests, as well as the hundreds of signatures of reservists on petitions stating that they would refuse to serve, as a sign of Israeli weakness and societal disintegration.

After the terrorists massacred 1,200 people, including dozens of children, and took 251 hostage, the IDF saw a well-over-100% response to its emergency call-up, including air force personnel who had signed those petitions.

Lador’s call came in response to Levin’s most recent refusal to allow the Judicial Selection Committee to vote on appointing a new Supreme Court president, a position that is currently empty.

He does not want to follow the tradition of selecting the most senior judge because he prefers a more conservative candidate.

The High Court of Justice ordered Levin on Thursday to hold the vote within five weeks, infuriating the justice minister with what he termed their “overreach” into the executive branch’s responsibilities and their desire to be “dictatorial rulers” even though no one had elected them to power.