After three weeks of reserve duty in the Etzion sector, I want to share the voices of my friends from the 439th Battalion of the Artillery Corps. Life is not always easy for them, as the state does not recognize the Judaism of one friend and does not allow marriage for another. Some of them also oppose maintaining settlements. Interestingly, they are all secular and left-leaning, but they gave up their work, studies, and family to participate in protests across Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Be’er Sheva.
When I asked them about their motivation for protesting, they initially cited concerns about the government and legal reform. However, upon further questioning, they expressed frustration with the government’s language and behavior towards protesters, feeling unheard and unsupported. One friend stated that they did not have a consolidated position on the legal reform’s exact balance between the executive and judiciary but came to protest against the government’s handling of the matter.
They want to emphasize that talk alone is not enough to resolve the current situation. The current government has broken the foundation of the covenant that binds them together in this land. In order to restore brotherhood and mutual guarantee, the legislative race and protest actions must stop. Continuing in this destructive path would lead to an abyss. Now is the time to sit down, talk together, and renew the covenant made three thousand years ago before Passover.
I am now returning from three weeks of reserve duty in the Etzion sector. And I want to bring here the voices of my friends from the team in the 439th Battalion of the Artillery Corps. The state does not always make life easy for my friends. One of them, the state does not yet recognize his Judaism, another, the state does not allow him to marry, there are some among them who do not at all like the idea of maintaining settlements.
All of them, so it turned out, are what today is commonly called ‘secular’, all of them are what is commonly called today ‘left’. But all of them, down to the last of them, gave up work and studies and family and showed up at the entrance to the Lachish Police Department on Sunday afternoon. When we met, they told me that they were coming here from the demonstrations. From Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and Be’er Sheva.
When did you decide to leave the house and start protesting?
So I asked them why you were protesting, and at first they explained how dangerous the reform was and how bad the government was. No problem, I told them, but I’ve known you for ten years. I never heard a single word from you about politics. It never interested you. When did you decide to leave the house and start protesting?
Then they gave me slightly different answers. We saw our Prime Minister call us anarchists, we heard our Minister of Finance say that he despises us, we heard our Minister of Information write that we are morons, we watched the Chairman of the Constitutional Committee say that he underestimates our fears. We feel that this government is running over us, that it is not sees us. that every day she brings up illusory bills that it is not clear if they are intended to frighten or upset us.
“I really don’t know what the exact balance should be”
So we couldn’t stay at home. This is what brought us to the streets. Look, I did not come here with a consolidated position regarding the legal reform. I really don’t know what the exact balance between the executive and the judiciary should be. I came here to say that’s not how you talk. That’s not how you behave. That’s not how you run a country.
And certainly that’s not how the foundations of the regime and society are changed and reformulated. In recent days, some members of the government can hear softer voices, voices that try to call for reconciliation and brotherhood. But there is a halachic rule that is very frustrating but also very, very deep: the halachic says that to turn a pure vessel into an impure vessel sometimes just talking is enough, but to restore it to being pure after it has become impure, you must do something.
“We cleaned the purest and cleanest places in society”
It may be that with a different style of speech and with a different conduct it would be possible to pass a reform quite similar to the one that is on the agenda. But now talking is not enough. We cleaned the purest and cleanest places in Israeli society. We have damaged the foundations of the covenant that binds us together in this land.
And at the point where we are now, nice words will not help. We need actions. We must stop the legislative race, and also the protest actions, stop the one-sided galloping into the abyss, and sit down and talk together. To restore brotherhood and mutual guarantee, to restore trust, and to renew the covenant we made three thousand years ago on the eve of Passover. Good week, it’s not too late to fix.