Warning: Barn burners are here. The barn burners are already here and they are eating every good part of already wounded Israeli society. With the heat of July and the heavy timing of Tisha B'Av, the sane majority of Israeli society needs to make sure that the spark of destruction does not turn into a huge fire.
Among the group of barn burners is Kaplan Force, the new branding of the protest leaders, a militant branding that certainly reflects what has become of this popular protest. The group of burners also includes two former prime ministers, Ehud Ehud, former IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, as well as prominent advertisers such as Ilan Shiloah and Itay Ben-Horin.
Ben-Horin himself, who owns a huge advertising agency whose clients include giants in the economy, declared a few days ago that "with great sorrow it seems that next week the gates of hell will open for the State of Israel." Hell, no less. "I call on the United States to reevaluate relations with Israel with all that this entails," Ehud Olmert said in the interview. Similar voices were made by MK Merav Michaeli. The BDS movement in the full sense of the word. This week, Ehud Barak called on the heads of the security establishments not to follow orders from the elected officials, and Dan Halutz has become an active encourager of refusal.
"If I were in the regular army now, I would act just like them," he said of the reluctant pilots.
It is not only civil disobedience that they are trying to provoke, but military disobedience against Israeli democracy. Not just a military uprising, but an international coup against Israel. They are not prepared for any compromise or dialogue and they do not want to solve the crisis, only to topple the government - and at any price. Take, for example, Forum 555 of reserve pilots. It's an entirely political forum founded in 2020, long before judicial reform, as are the black flags. These are the barn burners. They are not anxious about Israeli democracy, they are the good old "just not Bibi."
A few days ago, the recalcitrant pilots met with the person who became, unfortunately, the spearhead of political rejectionism, Prof. Suzy Navot. They met with her, Roni Alsheikh and Avichai Mandelblit, in order to understand the significance of the legislation, according to them. Do these pilots really want to understand the legal issues and their implications? If so, why didn't experts also come in from the side that supports the legislation? Why didn't they meet with other parties? Because they've already decided to disintegrate, no matter what. They understand the great dependence that the IDF has developed on the air force and on them, and exploit their position to thwart democratic legislation and topple the government.
"We will build a new nation out of this great rift," declared one of the protest leaders, Shekma Bressler. First you break, then you build a new one.
An old world has been razed to the ground, that is the aspiration of the barn burners. "Going up to the Knesset to liberate Jerusalem! Nothing less! Civil disobedience without violence. No compromises. Until victory!" declares their poster. "No compromises."
And for what? After all, when the coalition presented the entire reform as a single unit, they claimed it was a "blitz." The coalition stopped, listened to the breakdown, sat down for negotiations at the president's residence in order to reach agreements, because agreements are also important in the eyes of reform supporters, like me. I supported stopping and talks. Then when the opposition withdrew from compromise talks, the coalition decided to enact the most minor part of the reform: the grounds of reasonableness. And now, the protest leaders claim, it's "salami." Not all at once, not graded, not calls for consent. So what is? It seems that the leaders of the protest against the legal reform have decided to disintegrate the country.
Some of them declare that they are "guarding the common house," but are actually toppling it on the heads of all of us. Let my soul die with Levin. A small and extremist group decided that the grounds of reasonableness were grounds for burning Israeli society. We must not let this pass.
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