Political refusal of fighter pilots: protest in full burners

Hello, this is the captain; The protest of the fighter pilots of the Israeli Air Force surprised many – and some even accused them of mutiny and questioned their loyalty. Did you know that strikes and political refusal of fighter pilots is something that happens in the world on average every twenty years since the invention of the fighter plane?

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Today we will look at such cases, and learn what caused the refusal, how the general public in the country reacted, what the government did and who was right historically.

First of all, I will say that even though they rarely use it, fighter pilots have a natural political power: since ancient times, every government has aspired to have a mobile force that could respond to any internal threat and suppress popular uprisings. This is one of the reasons that every king had a mounted guard.

The mechanization of war made it possible to reach every point of insurrection more quickly, and airplanes raised this to the highest level: in less than a day, it is possible to arrive and bomb any insolent person who does not respect the crown. The rulers of the early 20th century were very happy about this ability – and imagine their astonishment when the pilots started to refuse them.

The first official pilots’ rebellion broke out in Germany in 1918. Even before the end of the First World War, various rebellions grew in the country – reaching their peak in November. The monarchical government was blamed for the failure of the war, and the people were tired of serving a distant and pompous aristocracy, who lived in fun and sent the poor to die in the blink of an eye.

Among other things, nationalist, communist, and liberal rebellions arose. Kaiser Wilhelm’s men ordered the German Air Force to bomb cities that supported the rebels, and were very surprised when they refused the order. Simple pilots, from among the ranks, stood up and said “These are our brothers, and we will not kill them for you.”

The government, with a centuries-old royal tradition, immediately accused the pilots of treason – but in the eyes of the German public, the traitors were sitting in palaces and not in the cockpit; The pilots’ protest received widespread support in Germany, which saw the attack order as an attempt to “divide and rule”.

The wheels of history turned and within a year of the incident the monarchy fell, a new constitution was established and the emperor’s role became merely symbolic. A fairly modern democracy arose in Germany – the Weimar Republic – which survived for about 15 years, until you-know-who came to power.

In 1961, the French government ordered to make the attitude towards the Algerian liberation movement more difficult – at that time Coligny was under French occupation. The calls for Algerian independence turned into a large protest, and the army was called to intervene forcefully and did so.

On April 25, a particularly large demonstration was organized in the capital Algiers, and it was decided to disperse it with an aerial bombardment. The fighter pilots who received the order simply stood up and said “No, Commander, I’m not going to drop bombs on civilians.”

The shock in France was enormous: the issue of Algerian independence had already split society, and now pilots came and said they were not murderers. And not just any pilots: they were members of the OAS movement, which in general opposed Algerian independence, and even tried to stage a military coup. But such killing simply seemed excessive to them.

A firestorm immediately erupted in the French media, with nationalist elements attacking the teams as traitors, while liberal elements praising their morality. The army arrested the pilots and tried them for refusal. At the end of a year from the incident, the masses aligned with common sense and the country won independence. To this day, it is said that the pilots contributed to emphasizing the issue in France and promoting the liberation from a humanitarian motive – and prevented a severe moral crisis.

In 1971, several pilots of the Pakistani Air Force announced that they would not board planes and would no longer launch attacks in the region of East Pakistan – on the grounds that the government’s actions against the aspirations of independence there were racist and violent. The government was stunned and grounded the entire Air Force for weeks, even though it was in the middle of a war with India. Then he thought, gave in to the demands of the pilots and canceled the bombing of villages and refugee convoys.

Here, too, the public aligned with the protestors; Within a year, East Pakistan gained independence and is now the country of Bangladesh. But the rebel pilots were tried and dismissed. Nevertheless, they instigated and led a wartime rebellion.

In 1975, Portuguese pilots went against the government’s order to bomb the country’s colonies in Africa. Just a year before, a fascist regime had fallen in Portugal, and the pilots said that the citizens of the colonies deserved to be free. The public agreed, and the government had to change the policy – until after a year it was replaced by a democratic government, which still exists in Portugal today.

In 1982, it was the turn of the fighter pilots in Argentina: many of them opposed the invasion of the Malvinas – aka the Falkland Islands, and their occupation by Great Britain. The pilots claimed that dictator Leopoldo Galtieri, the country’s ruler whose government was accused of corruption and economic failure, was trying to divert public anger from him to an external enemy. Therefore, they claimed, they would not fight an unnecessary and dangerous war in his name.

Galatieri stopped and chased them, and the public was not impressed; For the people, the liberation of the islands was a correction of a historical distortion. And here, as the pilots claimed, Britain came and made of the Argentine army Asado. The pilots shouted “we told you so”, within a year a democratic regime was established in Argentina, and Galtieri was tried and thrown into prison.

In 1989, several Chinese Air Force fighter pilots refused to fly sorties against the student riots and the Tien An Men Square protest, which were designed to intimidate the crowds. The massacre that followed was carried out with infantry rifles and not with airborne weapons, killing people whose only crime was to demand basic freedoms.

Democracy, as we know, has not yet arrived in China, but the massacre cost China dearly: it halted the trend of the West getting closer to the country, and delayed the process for many years. To this day, it remains a symbol of communist brutality, and has made the US approach to China much more hawkish.

Want an up-to-date example? Take the fighter pilots of Venezuela: a group of them arose in 2019 and asked for political asylum in Colombia, claiming that the president of their country, Nicolás Maduro, is a target of hatred and the most corrupt production in nature, for whom they are not ready to fly. The trigger: the arrest of the former Colombian defense minister, a prominent critic of the dictator.

Maduro is still seated, but the pilots’ protest intensified the global attention he received. The internal protest intensified, and at the end of a year the tyrant was hit with a bunch of sanctions and restrictions, and the US even issued an arrest warrant against him and placed a reward of 15 million dollars on him.

So what did we learn? That fighter pilots can be a good moral compass, and that historically, it’s worth listening to them. And it turns out that this also applies across cultures, countries, periods and regimes. Which brings me back to us – and to what is happening here in Israel.

It’s a bit confusing, but there is no pilot mutiny here; No one gave them an order and heard “no”. The IDF reserve pilots are all volunteers, and protested by not showing up for competency training. And they didn’t do it from a place of power and lordship, of “we will show them” – but of real concern for the moral future of the country.

Look, it’s not that an F15 pilot is a more moral person than the driver of a camper van or a Dana truck. Aircrewmen in combat formation simply know what kind of tremendous power is in their hands and what can be done with it. A thunder plane can, at the push of a button, throw at the enemy an amount of explosives equal to 150 volleys of a battery of heavy artillery. A single bomb can bring down a building, and even a mistake of a few meters is the potential for needless death on a horrific scale.

But the pilots are only the implementers of this power, they are the blade – when the hilt of the sword is held by a democratic government. And they are simply afraid of a situation in which the executive authority will get too much power, and try to use the air force without control – for example, in fake wars like in Argentina, against civilians like in Pakistan and Germany or in the service of criminals like in Venezuela; That’s how it is when there are no balances and brakes. History has taught us that politicians are very good at finding convincing reasons for terrible acts, so we need a mechanism to tell them “they have gone too far”, and sometimes also “it is forbidden”.

And for dessert, I would like to mention that fighter pilots of the Israeli Air Force are nevertheless different from truck drivers. These are fighters who train whole decades of their lives in operating the most dangerous war machines in the world.

And not just for the enemy, yes? Flying at 900 km/h at the height of the treetops is not something that is natural to do, accidents happen sometimes, and even perfect abandonment can leave you with injuries at the level of disability percentages.

In addition, years of unreasonable loads on the body take a physiological toll and the pilots choose this, and willingly pay. And in the war? They know very well that they will be sent the deepest into the enemy’s territory, and that he is really going to throw everything he has at them. And the pilots are clear that in many cases, the victory depends on their actions and they will sacrifice what is necessary to achieve it; No one has the right to doubt their devotion, or their love of country.

Bottom line – even if you don’t agree with the positions they express, it’s important to take into account: whether by cosmic coincidence or thanks to a sober vision, fighter pilots tend to land on the right side of history. And maybe, maybe it’s worth listening to them this time too. Have a nice flight!

Political refusal of fighter pilots: protest in full burners

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