Israel Is Stuck on the Lunatic Highway

A woman calls her husband to warn him, “They just said on the radio that some lunatic is driving against the traffic. The man replies, “Just one?! I'm on the highway right now, and I'm telling you baby, they're all lunatics!”

I heard this joke recently at a protest in front of the Knesset, Israel's parliament. The speaker, a well-known comedian, continued: "So go on, Bibi, keep driving, ignore all those lunatics telling you it's the wrong way—the U.S. president is a lunatic, the Nobel prize winners are lunatics, Tech giants, bankers, doctors, scientist, army generals—we're all lunatics!"

As Netanyahu continues his crazy drive towards the cliff-edge, the Israelis opposing the judicial overhaul are facing a tough decision—how far are we willing to go in order to stop him? When economic balance, national security, and physical well-being are at stake, civil resistance is no longer a theoretical concept—it is the new challenge every Israeli must face.

Major D. is an F-16 pilot, part of the Israeli air force reserve. To stay qualified, Major D. must attend a flight exercise at least twice a month. But this August, for the first time in his life, Major D. did not report for duty. Neither did ten other pilots from his squadron base. Their dramatic step is a reaction to the Israeli parliament’s passing of a key judicial overhaul bill a few weeks ago. "I've risked my life for this county for more than twenty years," he told me, "I never dreamed something like this could ever happen."

As another week passes without training, Major D. knows he might get rusty. And he's not the only one who's counting the days: Iran is watching. Syria is watching. The Israeli Air Force is a key factor in the country's national security. The reservists refusing to fly under Netanyahu are aware of that. Right now, it’s not the Iranian threat at the heart of their worries, it is the threat from within: "I will not serve a dictator," says Major D., "Until they cancel the anti-democratic bill, I won't get the engine going."

"We have until the end of the year. No later," said Israel’s former Air Force Chief Amikam Norkin to Haaretz newspaper, when he was asked to estimate how long before the strike affects the Air Force's readiness to operate.

Read More: Israel's Existential Crisis

Major D. and his friends are far from the only ones resisting—in the weeks since the vote, many more reservists have been missing duty, threatening not just military readiness, but also the army's unity. More than 11,000 reservists from different units of the Israeli army have already declared their decision to suspend their voluntary service. The real numbers are likely even higher, as many others prefer to withdraw from duty without announcing it.

Resistance within the army couldn't have happened without the strong pushback to Netanyahu's plan from the economic system. Opponents of the judicial coup applauded when Israeli tech giants such as Wiz and Papaya global took a stand and announced their plans to withdraw company funds from Israel as a response. Now, as Moody's warns investors that Israel faces "significant risk" to its economy, we realize the economic effects each household will soon have to face.

Civil resistance is the most powerful weapon we've got against the extreme rights' attempts to undermine the supreme court, but what if our own acts of resistance have a dangerous impact on our state's economy and national security? Could it be that we're sawing off the branch on which we're sitting? 

Stop your coup or we'll stop the country—you can see this slogan on almost every board in the rallies. But when pilots stop training, when people stop showing up to work, when the markets start to slow—we're hurting the same country that we're fighting for. These are dangerous steps we're taking here, but we're desperate enough to take them—it's our last hope. Lunatics on the highway, indeed.

"We are striking today to protect our patients from tomorrow," said MD Noa Vardi, board member of the Israeli LGBTQ+ medical society. Vardi's vast experience has taught her that the first to suffer from anti-democratic acts are those at the bottom of the Israeli food chain: Arabs, refugees, patients from deprived backgrounds. "It's not enough to be angry at the government," she says, "OK, you're angry—now ask yourself what you are going to do about it."

While the doctors were willing to strike to protect the Supreme Court from Netanyahu's overhaul, the court thought differently, and ordered them to stop the strike and return to work immediately. They said that the Israeli health system is too crucial to be allowed to strike.

Israel’s High Court set September 12 as the date for the hearing on the judicial reform bill. For the first time in the court’s history, Israel’s Supreme Court President Esther Hayut announced that the High Court of Justice would convene a full panel of 15 judges for the hearing. The panel will review a slew of legal petitions challenging the legislation’s legitimacy. Meanwhile, Israel's legislative body, the Knesset, started its annual summer break on July 30, a recess which will last until October.

But this is not a regular summer vacation—"It is injury time, and it must be used wisely—we can't count on the Supreme Court to cancel this anti-democratic law and do the job for us," said popular Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari.

Noah Harari was the key speaker at an emergency meeting of the Israeli mental health professional, held recently in Tel Aviv. I attended the meeting with my colleagues from Shalvata Mental Health hospital, where I work as a psychologist. The hall was completely packed, people were sitting everywhere. Hundreds of therapists and doctors, some of them holding key positions in public service, gathered to discuss the next steps of civil resistance. Strikes of school counselors, a halt on all training of new students, anti-tax moves and even a general strike were proposed. Action groups were formed.

When Noah Harari entered the hall, an hour before his talk, some practitioners stared at him with wide eyes: an intellectual superstar just walked in and joined a group of protestors discussing "what's next." In 2022, Noah Harari spoke at the world economic forum in Davos. Now, in 2023, he's devoting his time to the protest, giving speeches at rallies, urging the public to understand that this struggle is one of the most important the country has ever faced.

Harari's words were unsettling, even terrifying. Perhaps it was part of his attempt to move people to action: "If civil society remains silent, the Supreme Court judges might lack the courage to rule against the anti-democratic bill. So far, the army reservists have been courageous enough to stand up against the government's attempts to form a dictatorship—but if others fail to prove their solidarity, we might lose this struggle."

"He's right," Alberto, a lecture at Tel Aviv University, told me. "I've seen it happen in Argentina, you never know how fragile normality is, until you lose it. people won't realize it's a dictatorship until it's too late." Alberto worries that we're not fighting hard enough. The protests are nice, he says, too nice.

The country is boiling over this summer. With a few weeks until the High Court hearing, it feels like anything could happen—a full blown dictatorship, or a new civil agreement. The best of times. The worst of times.