The media howled, the public gasped and the coalition flinched on Friday when over 1,000 Air Force officers and personnel threatened to stop defending the nation. Some argued that–and not the judicial reform legislation being protested–marked the end of genuine democracy in Israel.

A day later, the mainstream media was again short-breathed as it announced that 10,000 reservists across the IDF announced they could no longer serve a government that went against their will.

“Earthquake” as reservists say they must rebel to “save Israel’s third sovereignty,” Channel 12 reported dramatically.

There was of course some bias involved in the way the anti-Netanyahu media presented the situation. Earlier, some 100,000 reservists had signed an online petitions stating they would never fail to defend Israel, politics notwithstanding. But they received very little, if any mainstream media coverage.

But which side the IDF comes down on is less important than the fact that its position has become the linchpin in this entire fiasco. The army’s position, at least as it’s presented in the press,...