How an elite Israeli commando built a protest movement to save his country
Army reservists have spearheaded opposition to the government’s controversial judicial reforms. They may have turned the tide
Mar 27th 2023By Yardena Schwartz
Shielding his eyes from the sun as it reflected on the sand dunes, Eyal Naveh looked out at the hundreds of new recruits gathered at an army base in central Israel. He felt his stomach churn as he looked into the earnest eyes of the 18-year-olds who peered up at him, exhausted by the morning’s training exercises. Naveh, six-foot tall and sturdily built, is a 47-year-old veteran of Sayeret Matkal, Israel’s most prestigious special-forces unit. As part of his reserve duty in late January, he was training a new generation of fighters. Some of these boys, he thought, would become the country’s future leaders, just like Binyamin Netanyahu, the country’s prime minister, who had served in the unit over five decades ago.
Normally, when instructing recruits, Naveh beams with pride for his country. Yet on that day, he grieved. “What kind of country would they go on to serve?” he thought to himself. During the lunch break, Naveh took a seat with five reservist friends. Newspapers on the table carried disturbing headlines. Netanyahu was pushing ahead with legislative reforms that would give the government unprecedented control over the country’s judiciary, including a greater say in the appointment of the judges and limitations on the Supreme Court’s powers to overturn laws.
“This is no reform,” Naveh said to his friends. “This is a coup. We have to do something”
“This is no reform,” Naveh said to his friends. “This is a coup. We have to do something.” Naveh and other reservists also feared that the politicisation of Israel’s judiciary could lead to a lack of international trust in the institution and expose people who served in the army to prosecution at the International Criminal Court. “We wouldn’t be able to leave the country without worrying about being arrested,” he told me.
The soldiers decided to start a WhatsApp group to figure out what they could do to thwart the government’s plan. They called themselves Brothers in Arms. Within a day, the group had 800 members.
On the night of January 25th, Naveh and 50 other reservists, mostly from elite units of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), gathered in Herzliya, a town on the coast just north of Tel Aviv, at one of the offices of Mixer, a chain of co-working spaces that Naveh had helped found. They came from across the spectrum of Israeli politics. None of them had ever protested against the government before.
We don’t need no judicial reforms Eyal Naveh, leader of the protest group Brothers in Arms, addresses a protest in Tel Aviv (second from top)
They brainstormed a strategy to save Israeli democracy that involved organising protests and demanding talks with the government. Together, they crafted a message for the public: our contract, as reservists, is with a Jewish and democratic state; our comrades have sacrificed their lives for this country. Left unsaid at the time was an implicit message: we will not serve what we consider to be a dictatorship.
Two months on from that night, Brothers in Arms is at the centre of a protest movement rocking the country. It has grown to 30,000 people. According to Naveh, most of them have now pledged to boycott reserve military duty unless the judicial reforms are scuppered. This would be a serious blow to the armed forces. A spokesman for the IDF told me there are “tens of thousands” of combat reservists, who outnumber those on active duty. The Israeli army “cannot win a war” without them, said the spokesman. On March 25th Yoav Gallant, the defence minister, worrying that the boycott might leave the country fatally weakened, called on the government to stop the judicial overhaul. He was sacked the next day. On the following evening, around 600,000 Israelis – around 6% of the population – took to the streets in protest. Union leaders called for a general strike on March 27th.
Together, they crafted a message for the public: our contract, as reservists, is with a Jewish and democratic state; our comrades have sacrificed their lives for this country
Defiance by members of the defence establishment has come as a shock in a country where the army plays a significant role in the formation of national identity. (Jewish Israelis must, at least theoretically, undertake national service, though many are granted exemptions.) At least a dozen retired security chiefs have been vocal participants in the protest movement. Former heads of the IDF, of Shin Bet, the security service, and of Mossad, the intelligence agency, have warned that Israel is in danger of becoming a de facto dictatorship. “We see this as our second war of independence,” Dan Halutz, a former head of the IDF, told me recently, after leading a street protest in Tel Aviv. Our conversation was interrupted every few minutes by passersby who recognised him. One young man who approached seemed on the verge of tears. “Please, don’t leave us,” he said. Halutz took the man’s left hand in both of his and reassured him, “We will never leave you.”
Over the past two months, Naveh has spent almost every waking hour planning his group’s next demonstration or out on the streets. They have held a big rally every Saturday night and up to six smaller ones a day. He barely sees his wife and six children, and comes home only to sleep. “This is the most important mission I’ve ever been on,” he told his family.
Stand up for your rights From top to bottom: Dan Halutz, former head of the IDF, has been an outspoken critic of the government. A protester holds a sign reading “Bibi resign” near the prime minister’s home. Ron Scherf, an IDF veteran, was arrested for his role in the protests. Members of the navy protest against the government
Brothers in Arms demonstrations are more like performances than conventional demonstrations. They have set up mock enlistment centres in ultra-Orthodox neighbourhoods, where virtually no one serves in the army, and erected checkpoints symbolically separating “Democratic Israel” from “Dictatorship Israel”. The first protest, held on February 2nd, was described by Brothers in Arms as a “journey”. Over the course of three days, protesters marched from Latrun – the site of one of the fiercest battles of Israel’s war of independence, where many IDF ceremonies are still held – to the Supreme Court in Jerusalem. Naveh didn’t expect many people to join them for the 15km walk in the cold and rain. On the first day, they numbered 800. The next day, 2,500. By the third day they were 10,000 strong. Holding Israeli flags and singing patriotic Hebrew songs, they stopped traffic as they marched.
Over the following weeks, tens of thousands of protesters joined regular demonstrations against the government’s agenda. Despite the strength of feeling, the government persisted in its plan. After the coalition advanced several of the judicial-reform bills, Brothers in Arms’ stance became more confrontational. They protested outside the homes of dozens of lawmakers. They rallied outside conferences at which members of the ruling coalition were speaking, leading some, including Netanyahu himself, to cancel their attendance.
Former heads of the IDF, of Shin Bet, the security service, and of Mossad, the intelligence agency, have warned that Israel is in danger of becoming a de facto dictatorship
On March 9th, Naveh and other leaders of Brothers in Arms targeted Kohelet Forum, a Jerusalem-based think-tank credited with masterminding the government’s efforts to weaken the Supreme Court. They placed sandbags and barbed wire outside the doors of its offices and put up signs that said “Kohelet is closed”. Naveh quickly changed his clothes, so he wouldn’t be recognised from surveillance footage, and joined hundreds of Brothers outside the building. As Kohelet’s executive director entered the building, protesters surrounded him, shouting “traitor!” and showering him with fake $100 bills to draw attention to the lack of transparency about the think-tank’s funding.
Ron Scherf, one of Brothers in Arms’ co-founders and another veteran of Sayeret Matkal, was arrested that day. Naveh directed his foot soldiers to the police station in Jerusalem where Scherf was being held. Turning to the police, he shouted, “Release Ron! He has reserve duty next week!”
Naveh was due to perform reserve duty the following week alongside Scherf. Normally, he looked forward to it. “I love the army. I love my country. I have never considered not serving.” This time, though, the decision was gut-wrenching. Still, he was convinced that he ought to do it. “As long as Israel is a democracy, I will serve it with all my heart,” he told me. He encouraged other members of Brothers in Arms to do the same.
Morale on the base was awful. “The coup was all we talked about,” he said. “We are all afraid.” On March 15th, the last night of his reserve duty, Naveh watched Isaac Herzog, the president, announce that he had formulated a compromise in the hope of avoiding a civil war. (Herzog had held talks with representatives of different groups, including Naveh himself). Netanyahu rejected the plan within an hour. “We are already in a civil war,” Naveh told me a few days later with anguish in his voice. This was a tipping point.
One young man who approached seemed on the verge of tears. “Please, don’t leave us,” he said. Halutz took the man’s left hand in both of his and reassured him, “We will never leave you”
Three days later, Brothers in Arms escalated their rebellion. Merely threatening not to serve wasn’t working. Now, the group called on all reservists to sign a petition committing them to refusing reserve duty. Nearly 30,000 reservists have signed. Hundreds have already skipped duty in protest, risking fines and prison.
I met Shay Shidlovsky, a 32-year-old engineer from the southern city of Beer Sheva, at a protest in Jerusalem. He had been protesting every week, and, on that day, had brought his three-month-old son with him. A veteran of a tank unit, he performs reserve duty for around a month each year and was scheduled to do it for five days during the last week of March. Yet if any part of the package of laws was passed while he was with his unit, he planned to pack his bags and go home.
Law, what is it good for? Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon, a former chief of staff of the IDF and former defence minister, shakes hands with Eyal Naveh at a protest in Tel Aviv (second from bottom)
Half of Shidlovsky’s family came from Iraq after the country’s Jews were exiled following the foundation of the state of Israel. The other half survived the Holocaust. “If the laws pass, this won’t be the country my grandparents found refuge in,” Shidlovsky, who is not a member of Brothers in Arms, told me. “If that means Israel will cease to exist, then it will cease to exist. That won’t be on me. That’ll be on Netanyahu.”
On the morning of March 23rd, which had been designated by protesters as a “Day of National Paralysis”, police arrested a number of leaders of the movement. In Tel Aviv that afternoon, demonstrators were met by water cannons and mounted police. Later that day, in a primetime address, Netanyahu announced the new laws would be ratified the following week. (On the evening of March 27th, he delayed those plans.)
Netanyahu had promised to “mend the national rift” but Naveh wasn’t persuaded. “What Netanyahu actually said is that today I decided to establish a dictatorship,” he told me when we spoke the following morning. But Naveh wasn’t downhearted. “We will continue to fight with all our might,” he said. “We will win this war.”
Naveh has spent almost every waking hour planning his group’s next demonstration or out on the streets. “This is the most important mission I’ve ever been on”
Meanwhile, Shidlovsky was scheduled to report for duty at a base in the Negev desert, in the south of Israel, on March 26th. He’d vacillated over what to do for weeks. On the evening of March 25th, Gallant, the defence minister, had sealed his own fate by publicly declaring that “the growing rift in our society…poses a clear, immediate and tangible threat to Israel’s security.”
Shidlovsky called his commander. “It tears me apart”, he told him, “but I can’t be there tomorrow.” His commander tried to change his mind. “There aren’t many people who do reserve service,” he implored him. “We are holding up the army. We’re not Bibi’s army. We are Israel’s army.”
“I agree with you,” Shidlovsky told him, “but the basis of everything is our values as a free, democratic country. And if that contract is being ripped apart, I cannot fight for a dictator.” ■
Yardena Schwartz is a freelance journalist based in Israel
PHOTOGRAPHS: JONAS OPPERSKALSKI
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