The images outside Deputy Supreme Court President Noam Sohlberg’s home were disturbing, but they were not surprising.
In the wake of the High Court’s latest rulings regarding haredi (ultra-Orthodox) military service, protesters gathered outside the justice’s residence, turning political disagreement into personal confrontation.
The scenes prompted widespread condemnation, as they should have. Judges should not be intimidated in their homes, and democratic societies cannot function when public officials become targets of mob pressure.
What happened outside Sohlberg’s home is not an isolated incident. It is part of a broader and increasingly dangerous trend in Israeli society: the normalization of selective obedience.
More and more, individuals, communities, and political movements across the spectrum are embracing the idea that laws are binding only when they align with their beliefs, interests, or sense of justice.
This phenomenon is not confined to any one sector. The details differ. The political affiliations differ. The grievances differ. But the underlying message is remarkably consistent: the law is legitimate only when it supports my cause.
Contempt for authority
For years, Israelis have watched highways blocked by demonstrators, convinced that the stakes justified disruption. We have seen unauthorized outposts established in defiance of state decisions. We have witnessed ultra-Orthodox protesters reject draft orders and challenge the legitimacy of court rulings.
We have watched criminal organizations in the Arab sector operate with open contempt for state authority. Politicians, meanwhile, have too often condemned lawbreaking when it comes from the other side while excusing it when it serves their own political interests.
Each case arrives wrapped in its own justification. Each group insists that its circumstances are unique. Each act of defiance is presented as an exception.
But nations rarely erode because of a single exception. They erode because exceptions become habits.
The danger lies not merely in the violations themselves but in the culture they create. A democratic state depends on a shared understanding that disputes are resolved through institutions rather than through raw pressure. Citizens are free to protest, criticize, organize, and advocate. They are not free to unilaterally decide which laws apply to them and which do not.
Once that principle begins to crumble, the consequences extend far beyond any individual controversy.
Courts cease to be courts and become political actors in the eyes of those who dislike their rulings. Police become obstacles rather than enforcers of a common standard. Military service becomes a burden for some and an optional obligation for others.
Government itself becomes less a system of law than a negotiation between competing pressure groups, each demanding special treatment based on its own moral certainty.
The result is not freedom. It is fragmentation.
Israel is particularly vulnerable to this dynamic because it has always been a society of strong tribes. Religious and secular. Jewish and Arab. Left and Right. Veterans and newcomers. The country’s extraordinary diversity is one of its strengths, but it also requires something essential to hold it together: a shared commitment to the rules of the game.
Without that commitment, tribal identity begins to replace citizenship.
Israel facing simultaneous internal, external threats
That danger is especially acute today. Israel remains engaged in a prolonged regional struggle. The threat from Iran has not disappeared. Hezbollah remains entrenched along the northern border. The war’s consequences continue to reverberate throughout Israeli society. International scrutiny is intense, and domestic tensions remain high.
Under such conditions, social cohesion is not a luxury. It is a strategic asset.
Israel’s enemies do not need every institution to fail. They merely need Israelis to lose faith that those institutions belong equally to everyone.
This is why the events outside Sohlberg’s home matter. Not because they represent a unique crisis, but because they reflect a broader national habit that has been developing for years. The protest was a symptom, not the disease.
The debate over military service will continue, and it should. Democracies are built to accommodate fierce disagreements about questions of policy, identity, and obligation. The draft debate is among the most consequential issues facing the country, and passionate arguments are both inevitable and legitimate.
But there is a critical distinction between arguing with a ruling and deciding that the ruling no longer applies.
The moment every sector claims the right to determine which laws are binding and which are optional, citizenship becomes tribal membership, and the state becomes little more than a collection of competing exceptions.
A state cannot survive when every tribe appoints itself the final court of appeal.