Fighter pilot Shai Kalach takes his battle from Israel’s skies to its soul

Photos: David Cohen

When Israel’s air force struck Iran this year, Shai Kalach could imagine himself in the thick of the action. For the kibbutznik pilot turned- conservative-thought-leader,
the journey to faith and the Jewish future is only just beginning

IT was the Friday night after October 7.

On army bases across the country, thousands of reservists were still streaming through the gates in a great wave of volunteerism — but former F-16 pilot Shai Kalach discovered that not all reservists were welcome.

Like many Israelis, within hours of the Simchas Torah slaughter Kalach had shown up to offer his services. At the ‘Bor’ — the air force’s cavernous war room deep beneath the Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv — Kalach stood out.

Not just because of the kippah that the kibbutznik-turned-baal teshuvah wore in the uber-secular air force environment.

Shai Kalach was something of a bête noir to his fellow pilots. Over the previous year — as his colleagues threatened not to show up for reserve duty in protest of the Netanyahu government’s justice reform plans — Kalach went on the offensive. He accused them of running a protection racket to bully the government into changing course. He was the public face of the “Mechanics’ Letter” — a response from the air force’s lowly ranks who wanted nothing to do with the politicking of the pilots.

In a service that’s one of the last bastions of Israel’s old left-wing elite, Shai Kalach became a renegade — a right wing, religious alien inside their ranks.

But in that first week of war, as Israel unified amid the emergency of multi-front war, the acrimony seemed to belong to the past. Old divisions were papered over. Working alongside his fellow officers, the father of eight put in night shifts using the specialized skills accrued over years of missions across the Middle East.

So when he walked in to the Kirya’s command room that Friday night, Shai Kalach was shocked when his immediate superior looked up and waved his fingers. “No,” he gestured.

“What do you mean, no?” responded Kalach.

“As long as I’m in charge here, I don’t want you serving under my command,” the officer replied.

“Is this political?” the religious pilot challenged.

“Yes,” answered the senior officer.

Shocked at the bare-faced admission of bias, Kalach left the war room to take his case further up the command chain. But it quickly became obvious that even amid a national emergency, the higher echelons were closing ranks to protect their own. In an elevator, he ran into another officer who looked at him and said bluntly: “They still let you serve in the Air Force? I wouldn’t.”

Two days later, the Air Force’s head of manpower called to confirm that amid a moment of national unity, senior officers were still running October 6 ideological purity tests: “You’ve become a red flag,” the officer said. “You’re removed from the reserves altogether — not just the war room, but from the entire reserve framework.’”

That acrimonious breakup meant that on the night of June 13 this year — when Israel wiped out Iran’s senior military and scientific echelons in a show-stopping opening strike — the religious pilot was a bystander. In a mission that he himself had trained for, he played no part.

Over the past two years, as former colleagues engaged almost nightly in reshaping the Middle East from Yemen to Qatar, Shai Kalach has emerged as an outspoken critic of the old order whose politicization of the air force he sees as a symptom of something deeper.

“Israel today is effectively governed by a ‘bureaucratocracy’ — a shadow regime composed of an unelected echelon of officials,” he says. “The pilots and officers I served with are incredible people, but they carry an ingrained sense of ownership. They feel that the planes are theirs, the tanks are theirs, the state is theirs.”

That’s why the 43-year-old former pilot has set himself a new mission — one that’s far more sweeping than simply de-politicizing the air force. He wants to use his own journey and the wake-up call of October 7 to change the country’s direction.

“Post-war the greatest challenge facing the country will be identity. Not security or economic, but the question of what we’re doing here. We set up a country, but what’s it for? The old elite suffers from an identity vacuum.”

Kalach’s grassroots organization, Netzach Yisrael, aims to create a movement among ordinary Israelis to recognize that post October 7, with the country battling for its very existence, Israel needs a new identity — uncompromisingly Jewish and proudly traditional.

“When you’re not inoculated with identity and purpose, security suffers because you don’t know what you’re defending.”