The refusal by 12 soldiers of the Duchifat Battalion to participate in evacuating the two families from the buildings they invaded in Hebron's market was received by the Israeli public as yet another expression of refusal on ideological grounds. But that is not the case here.

Israeli society, with a large measure of innocence and naivete, understood the incident as an expression of the young soldiers' sincere vacillation between the duty to carry out a military order and their own conscience. The truth of the matter is that we are not talking here about the refusal to carry out orders on the part of young soldiers, but rather about a much more serious, deep-seated and dangerous phenomenon.

We are facing an organized, calculated attempt at sedition, pure and simple. In effect, it is a conspiracy to chip away at and destroy the ability of the Israel Defense Forces to fulfill its purpose and mission as a people's army in a democratic state. In other words, what we are dealing with is an effort to prevent the IDF from being the long arm of the lawful, legitimate government and carrying out any task assigned by the elected leadership of the state. It is essential that Israeli society understand what it is facing, because only then can it take the actions necessary to avert the plot.