The State of Israel has simply gotten used to the reserves

Quietly, almost surreptitiously, the government approved the extension of emergency orders for reserve mobilization until the end of September 2026. Another headline that was pushed slightly to the margins. In 240,000 homes in Israel, this headline puts an entire system on high alert. Again the heart skips a beat, again the children will miss their parents, again the mothers and fathers will not sleep at night. The burden, of course, will fall on the same familiar shoulders.

The State of Israel has simply gotten used to it. It has gotten used to the fact that it has a permanent group, a few percent of the population, who will always stand at attention. And this habit has birthed a dangerous cynicism. At the beginning of 2026, when the government decision was passed regarding the budget that would allow the families of the reserve system to function, it looked like a promise for the future: it was determined, among other things, that reserve service would be limited to 55 days a year. However, since then we have gone through upheavals, and a reality that exceeded all imagination. Promises are one thing and reality is another: in the meantime, reserve soldiers find themselves performing more than double the reserve days than promised — over 110 days a year, and we are only in August.

So the reserve days have doubled, but the budget has not. In fact, these days we are forced to fight for an amendment to the government decision and the approval of an additional budget for the soldiers in accordance with the reserve days we actually perform. It is shameful, but no one cares. The government decision is frozen, and there is no one to talk to. Why? Just because.

The last few years have taught us all a painful lesson that can no longer be ignored: reserve soldiers are also a depletable resource. The erosion is gnawing at every good part; the family, economic, and mental costs are unbearable, and the state refuses to understand that it cannot continue to press the pedal without filling up with gas. The Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich, discovered a convenient formula: why invest additional budgets, why fight for real compensation that would prevent the collapse of businesses and careers of the soldiers and their spouses, if one can simply rely on our sense of mission? After all, the soldiers will always arrive. This formula allows him to ignore us. The budgets that he does not approve to transfer are supposed to, for example, fund the resilience centers that cannot provide us with an answer right now, because there is no money. In his eyes, this is the last thing that is urgent.

This erosion is intensifying in the face of uncertainty. The "two months plus another two months" method is a bankruptcy of responsibility. What will be here in another half a year? Another year? Another two years? Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Israel Katz, it is time for you to look reality in the eyes. If you sign orders time after time and ask us to stand at the front, the minimum is that you stand behind us and create for us certainty and a faithful picture of the situation. Promote decisions that truly protect us and develop real solutions for those who carry the security of all of us, instead of rolling the responsibility further. Taking us for granted is no longer just callousness — it is an existential danger.

This time, something inside us has cracked. After years in which you chose again and again to focus on narrow interests and determined the status quo that brought us to this point, we have reached the edge. We are telling you here and now: we may be serving, but we are tired of serving your detachment. This time, we are the ones who will choose. We will choose someone who knows how to create certainty for us, someone who knows how to provide an answer, someone who will protect the serving public and its families who cannot sleep at night. You still have a short time to change direction. Instead of asking us to choose you once again — a moment before it is too late — just try, for a change, to choose us.