Middle East Monitor / December 5, 2024
The Israeli government has begun a process described as a “political purge” to rid the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opponents, Haaretz has reported.
The newspaper added that this is confirmed by the request of Defence Minister Israel Katz for the IDF to cancel a call-up for reserve duty that was sent to Eyal Naveh, a founder of the Brothers and Sisters in Arms movement as well as one of the people most identified with the anti-government protests.
“Anyone who called for mass refusal to report and refusal to serve isn’t fit to train the next generation of IDF fighters,” said Katz.
The newspaper explained that since 7 October, 2023, Netanyahu’s allies “began targeting members of Brothers and Sisters in Arms, who spearheaded the policy of refusing to volunteer for reserve duty due to the government’s attempted judicial overhaul.”
It pointed out that they were targeted even though Naveh and other members of the group were among the first to provide direct help to victims of the disaster, just as the pilots who protested against the overhaul in order to defend the country then rushed to report to their squadrons to defend the country during wartime. “These are the same pilots to whom Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi said, ’the people of Israel can get along without you, and you can go to hell.’”
The newspaper said that leftists and protest supporters are being denounced as traitors and ousted from the IDF. “In recent months, dozens of reservists were suspended after signing a petition saying they would stop doing reserve duty if the government didn’t work to secure a deal to return the hostages.”
Katz, added Haaretz, would rather politically persecute those who do serve but don’t support Netanyahu than draft the dodgers and thereby endanger the governing coalition.”
