Kudos to Trump for mentioning the USAF mechanics Ruthie Blum
https://www.jns.org/kudos-to-trump-for-mentioning-the-usaf-mechanics/
An impromptu press conference took place on Monday evening, just as U.S. President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and functionaries from both administrations were sitting down to their much-touted working dinner at the White House. It would be the first of several meetings this week between American officials and the Israeli leader to discuss several pressing issues. Among these was the joint defanging of the Islamic Republic’s ballistic-missile and nuclear capabilities.
Asked by a reporter about the U.S. military’s June 22 airstrikes on Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz, Trump paused to give credit to the men and women of the U.S. Air Force who carried out the spectacular surprise operation.
“We had the pilots here yesterday, as you know, and they were incredible,” he said. “And we also had the mechanics. There were, I think, 170 people, a lot of people, that had to do with that incredible journey—a journey that could have been horrible. You remember what happened with Jimmy Carter, with the helicopters and all, and ultimately hostages. We had the exact opposite. It went perfectly.”
Trump’s mention of the mechanics went unnoticed, though the people responsible for the literal nuts and bolts of the mission must have been pleased to be acknowledged. After all, it is due to their skill and their diligence that the aircraft performed properly and that all the pilots were able to return home safely.
This bears stressing, and not only in light of the possibility—if not probability—that additional sorties over Iran will become necessary. In any case, the Israeli Air Force has been busy targeting terrorist bases and infrastructure in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, and, of course, Gaza. Due to its masterful precision before and during the current war, the IAF has always been treated with well-deserved awe at home and abroad.
It’s thus hard to remember—and difficult to believe—that six months before the Hamas massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, a group of IAF reservists used their elite status to engage in political extortion. When the then-new Netanyahu-led coalition announced plans to reform the overactive, power-grabbing judiciary, this cadre pulled a stunt that should have cost them their wings: They declared that they wouldn’t serve under such a government. A few of them even declined to turn up for crucial training exercises.
Their tantrum wasn’t the only reason Netanyahu decided in early April 2023 to give President Isaac Herzog a chance to broker negotiations toward a compromise between the opposing sides. Many other groups were protesting in an equally ugly way—with demonstrators traipsing around in Handmaid’s Tale costumes and threatening to shut down the economy if even the slightest alteration was made to the judicial system.
Following Netanyahu’s statement that he was halting all legislative moves to calm tensions and allow for dialogue, the pilots in question said they’d return to duty, but with a caveat. As one senior IAF officer put it, if the upshot of the talks at the President’s Residence isn’t to their liking, his compatriots would resume their refusal to fly. Some went as far as to threaten not to participate in what was at the time an almost unfathomable “potential” attack on Iran.
Their crossing of a bright red line was bad enough. Worse was the response of their superiors.
IAF commander Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar penalized only one of his out-of-line subordinates, Col. Gilad Peled, for acting “contrary to the orders of the commander of the force and in a manner inappropriate to his rank and status.” Yet the very next day, he reversed the sacking when Peled claimed that he hadn’t encouraged any other IAF personnel to refuse duty. That travesty occurred a month before Netanyahu paused judicial-reform measures, by the way.
Just as jaw-dropping was the fact that then-IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi didn’t call either Peled or Bar to task. On the contrary, he, too, had been listening to the “concerns” of the men and women in uniform about the looming “destruction of Israeli democracy” and “rise of a Netanyahu dictatorship.”
It needs noting that the above pilots were in the minority. Yet their expertise, funded heftily and happily by taxpayers, provided them with the clout that made for sensationalist headlines in anti-government media outlets.
One consequence of the already nasty business was the devastating effect it had on IAF mechanics. Their crushed morale was detailed in a letter to Bar, Halevi and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. It was drafted by former F-16 pilot and flight-school commander Maj. (res.) Shay Kallach—today the founding chairman of Netsach Israel, a movement for the restoration of Zionist values in the Jewish state—at the behest of his brother, a longstanding IAF technician.
“We work all hours of the day and night, on Shabbat and holidays, to maintain the aircraft, revving the engines, fueling up, removing pins, closing panels and much additional dirty work,” the missive read, in part. “When you [pilots] board a plane during the winter with your flight gloves on, our hands are sore and frozen from the icy iron of the plane so that you can take off and land safely. … We have always maintained and armed the planes brilliantly, being the best soldiers we could be—even though we didn’t pass the selection for the pilots’ training course the way you did. But we always felt first-rate, like you … However, now that you’ve made it clear that our voice isn’t equal to yours, we feel second-rate. … The hands that salute you before you leave the aircraft shelter and taxi to the takeoff point no longer have the strength to do so.”
It went on, “We’ll let you in on a secret, our beloved pilots. Every time we prepared the plane for you, it wasn’t really for you; it was for the people of Israel, for the security of the State of Israel, because we … knew that we were serving the nation, without reservation, and that we all share the same unconditional love. Therefore, we will not emulate you and refuse to serve. We won’t rebel and call for a military coup. We … won’t allow political disputes to enter our holiest of holy IDF. But we are calling on you to reverse course immediately—to apologize to us; to salvage the last vestige of respect we still have for you; and restore the enormous motivation that was instilled in us.”
It continued, “And please don’t explain to us that by refusing to serve, you’re rescuing democracy and safeguarding the unity of the people and the state, because through your action, you have burned our ballots. The army and all its soldiers must, at all costs, be kept out of every [political/ideological] argument and dispute.”
Finally, it urged the IAF to create a “mechanism and deterrence and punishment to ensure that such things don’t happen again for political reasons,” and demanded that “those who don’t retract their refusal to serve and apologize be stripped of their wings, as they aren’t worthy to serve the State of Israel alongside us, the technicians of the IAF.”
It’s not clear whether the pilots being addressed ever deigned to repent by saluting the unsung heroes they had taken for granted. But it became moot not long thereafter.
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