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THREE ISRAELI ARMY RESERVISTS EXPLAIN WHY THEY REFUSE TO CONTINUE
SERVING IN GAZA  
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Liza Rozovsky
June 27, 2024
Haaretz
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_ Yuval was required to torch two residential buildings; Michael
realized how many civilians were likely to be killed during every
bombing he observed; Tal broke down when Israel entered Rafah. They
are willing to suffer the price for their refusal.... _

Clockwise, from upper left: Michael Ofer Ziv, Tal Vardi and Yuval
Green. 'The moment the operation began in Rafah I felt it was beyond
what I could feel right about ethically, stand behind and justify,'
says Vardi., Credit: Naama Greenbaum, Tomer Appelbau, Moti Milrod /
Haaretz

 

When Tal Vardi, a civics teacher from Jerusalem, was absent for a
prolonged period from the high school where he teaches because he was
called up for reserve duty, his students were surprised. He was one of
the only members of the school faculty who disappeared for a long
time, from the start of the war until the end of December, although he
was considered the most left-wing of them all.

"Indeed, I'm a very political teacher," admits Vardi, 28, in a
conversation with Haaretz. "My students know my political stances on
most issues. I believe that I share them in a thought-provoking way
which gives rise to a healthy discussion in class."

At the end of last month, Vardi, along with 41 other reservists who
have served in the military since October 7, signed the first letter
of refusal published by reservists since the beginning of the war in
the Gaza Strip.
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'A friend told me: 'I was in Shifa with my tank ... and four months
later they sent me another emergency call-up to return to the same
place, to occupy places that I'd already occupied.'

"The six months during which we participated in the war effort proved
to us that military activity alone won't bring the hostages home,"
wrote the signatories to the letter, 10 of whom signed with their full
name and the others with initials.

The writers then referred to the invasion of Rafah: "This invasion,
aside from endangering our lives and the lives of innocents in Rafah
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won't bring back the hostages alive… It's either Rafah or the
hostages, and we choose the hostages. Therefore, after the decision to
enter Rafah rather than to bring about a hostage deal, we, male and
female reservists, are declaring that our conscience doesn't allow us
to lend a hand to forfeiting the lives of the hostages and torpedoing
another deal."

The signatories include 16 in Military Intelligence
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seven in the Home Front Command. The others serve in infantry,
engineering and tank units. Two of them serve in elite units, the
Commando and Lotar units. One of the seven from the Home Front Command
noted that many reservists serving in his command were assigned after
October 7 combat missions such as serving on the line in the West
Bank, to replace the many conscripts redeployed to Gaza. Most of the
signatories told Haaretz that they're aware that their views are an
exception among reservists.

Vardi, a Tank Corps commander, is one of three signatories who agreed
to be identified in this article. His reserve brigade was first sent
to the war in the north to replace the battalions of conscripts who
were sent to the south. He was engaged there mainly in teaching
younger reservists, who were trained to fight in state-of-the-art
tanks, but now had to learn how to operate older tanks.

 
An X post with the first letter of refusal published by reservists
since the beginning of the war in the Gaza Strip.
"I grew up in the north and I spent the summer vacation between fifth
and sixth grade, during the Second Lebanon War, running to the safe
room," he explains. "I didn't have any doubts about doing so. I felt
that I was doing my small part in the effort to protect the country's
citizens."

Even now, he says, if called up again for reserve duty in the north,
he'll report, but if he's summoned to a job related to the fighting in
Gaza, he'll refuse. "When I returned from reserve duty I started to
question where this thing was going," he recalls. He says that after
October 7 he had no doubt that Israel would begin a ground operation
in Gaza, that it would last for a few months, and that in the end they
would bring back the hostages. But the more time passed, the stronger
were his doubts, in part after conversations with friends serving in
the career army and the reserves.

"A friend told me: 'I was in Shifa [in Gaza] with my tank
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I felt that it was right and important, and four months later they
sent me another emergency call-up to return to the same place, to
occupy places that I'd already occupied,'" he says.

For Vardi, the turning point came when Israel opted for a ground
operation in Rafah over signing a deal to release the hostages and end
the war. "The moment the operation began in Rafah I felt it was beyond
what I could feel right about ethically, stand behind and justify."

'We're just chasing after heads in order to demonstrate some kind of
achievement, without any strategy and direction.'
 

 
A general view shows the site of Israeli strikes on houses at Al
Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, June 22, 2024.  (Photo credit: Ayman
Al Hassi/Reuters  //  Haaretz)
 

Crossing a red line

Yuval Green, a 26-year-old student and a reserve paratrooper, stresses
that even before October 7 he was long undecided about continuing
doing reserve duty, given his opposition to the occupation and to
Israel's policy in the West Bank. "The guys I serve with in the
reserves were with me during compulsory service too, so we have a very
significant relationship," he says.

"We've been friends since 2018, I'm their paramedic, and even when I
already realized that leaving the reserves is the right thing, it's
not an easy decision." On Sukkot he finally decided to stop doing
reserve duty, and even wrote a letter about it to his comrades. He
intended to send the letter on October 8, the first day after the
Simhat Torah holiday.
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he never sent the letter.

On October 8, Green set aside his ethical doubts and was drafted into
the reserves. After a few months of training exercises and missions in
the north, the squad was sent to the Khan Yunis area. That was in
early December, a few days after the deal through which over 100
hostages were released, blew up. By late December, he understood from
radio reports that Israel was vehemently refusing the conditions set
by Hamas to implement a new deal – an end the war.

Green couldn't understand the operational reason for torching a
residential building. 'Do we know it's the home of a Hamas combatant?
I had a feeling it was self-evident to him that we were torching
them.'

"That was a red line I had set for myself, but I crossed it. The squad
was important to me," says Green. Another red line was crossed when
the company commander ordered the squad to torch one of the houses in
which they had been staying, when the time came to leave it. The team
had burned down houses before, but it was done in areas designated for
demolition due to their proximity to the border.
 

This time, Green couldn't understand the operational reason for
torching a residential building. "I spoke to the company commander, I
tried to understand why," he recalls. "Do we know it's the home of a
Hamas combatant? I had a feeling it was self-evident to him that we
were torching them."

Green says the company commander explained that the house had to be
torched so they wouldn't leave military equipment there and reveal
army combat methods, but Green wasn't convinced. He says the equipment
can be removed, and there are no special combat methods revealed by
looking at a house where soldiers stayed. "I said if we're doing that,
I'm going," he says. "And they really did burn down the house and I
left. I went up during the next leave and didn't return."

That happened after almost four consecutive months of reserve duty and
a few days before the unit in which he served was due to be
discharged. His commanders and friends understood, and so far there
haven't actually been any consequences.

He hasn't received an emergency call-up since then. He stresses that
he has no intention of reporting for reserve duty again if called to
do so. He hasn't given any thought to the question of how he would
deal with the likely sanctions for refusing to serve. "When I believed
I had to be in the army, I was there and I took risks," he explains.
"So here, I'm not risking my life but rather my social status, and
this risk is worth it to spare human lives and to do what I believe
in."

 
Yuval Green during his army service. He hasn't given any thought to
the question of how he would deal with the likely sanctions for
refusing to serve.  (Image:  Haaretz)
KILLING WITHOUT A LOGICAL REASON

Michael Ofer Ziv, 29, from Tel Aviv, also signed the letter of refusal
to do more reserve duty. During most of his compulsory service, he was
a combat soldier in the Kfir Infantry Brigade. He served later as an
operations officer in the 16th Brigade. In October, he interrupted a
vacation in Turkey to report for duty. During the fighting, he was
appointed the brigade control officer.

From brigade headquarters, he kept track in real time of films of
drones, which also documented Israel Air Force bombings in Gaza. "It's
far from you and the feeling is that it isn't real," he says. "You see
them taking down vehicles, buildings, people. And every time a
building falls, everyone goes 'Wow!' Many people, including me, have
the experience of 'Wow, it's insane,' and there are those who say,
'We're showing them, screwing them, taking revenge.' That's the vibes
you hear in the war room."

He says that it took a week or two before he realized that "every time
you see it, it's a building that's falling. If people were in it, then
they're dead. And even if there aren't any people inside, everything
that's there – televisions, memories, pictures, clothing – is
gone. It's high-rise buildings. In the war room, they know what the
level of evacuation is."

He notes: "They keep saying, for example, 50 percent were evacuated
from the area. I remember a day when I heard '50 per cent were
evacuated from northern.' That same day, I saw a building in the area
fall and I thought to myself: '50 percent were evacuated from the
area, but 50 percent are still there.' At the same time there are also
bombings in southern Gaza, and we know nobody was evacuated from
there. On the contrary, everyone fled to there."
 

When his brigade entered Gaza and the responsibility for the shooting
and the bombing in the area was theirs, says Ofer Ziv, permission to
fire was given with relative ease. "There are areas where it's
forbidden to fire without approval of the command, for all kinds of
reasons. For example, it's forbidden to bomb buildings that are near
humanitarian areas. In the end, sometimes we fire of course. You get
exceptional permission. Attention is paid to the hostages, but there
isn't a feeling that there's particularly strong oversight," he
explains. "When a commander asked me at some point if we'd get
permission to fire somewhere, I told him: 'We'll get permission, the
only question is when.' In other words, the vibe is 'You can fire
wherever you want. You have to get permission, but there will be
permission. It's only bureaucratic.' I can count on one hand the times
when we were told: 'You can't fire there.'"

Ofer Ziv says he felt confused when he watched the air force bombings
from headquarters. "At first it's very hard to say what's justified
and what isn't," he says. "From a distance it's easy to say: 'That's
how it is in war; people get killed.' But in war there aren't 30,000
people killed, most of them buried beneath the ruins when they're
bombed from the air. The feeling is of indiscriminate firing."

He adds that at the time when he served, the open fire regulations
didn't pass from the command via the brigade headquarters to the
field. "From my service, I'm familiar with a document of open-fire
instructions that comes down from the areal division, to the areal
battalion, from there to the brigades, to the company commander and
the soldiers. I never saw such a document – I didn't get such
instructions from the division. I'm sure there were briefings on the
ground, but because I know what changes the open-fire instructions
undergo when making their way from the division to the soldiers, I can
imagine what happens when this framework is lacking."

A., a 26-year-old reservist in Military Intelligence who also signed
the letter and asked not to be named, describes similar feelings. He
volunteered in early October for reserve duty and served for about two
and a half months. Because he was responsible for finding
assassination targets, he participated in lethal activities. He
realized over time that he was a partner to acts that violate his
conscience.

"At first, there was a sense of mobilization," he says. "They give you
a list of five to six people who are important enough, and if we get
them, we'll harm Hamas' capability. You can argue with this strategy,
but that's the strategy. Slowly but surely, you realize we're unable
to hit a specific important person and begin to look for other
targets, whom nobody has every heard of, and suddenly we tell
ourselves they're also important."
 
Garbage piles up next to a makeshift tent camp for Palestinians
displaced by Israel's air and ground offensive in Nuseirat refugee
camp, Gaza, Thursday, June 20, 2024.  (Photo credit: Abdel Kareem
Hana/AP Photo  //  Haaretz)
He says: "They justify it with a hundred reasons – 'Maybe that'll
deter them, maybe here, maybe there,' and start chasing after this
person as though he's the most important target in the world, and in
the end, when you blow him up, you say: 'We have no problem that he's
now in the house with the entire family,' although there's no
indication that the killing of this person really has any military
rationale. I felt that what I'm doing is useless. We're just chasing
after heads in order to demonstrate some kind of achievement, without
any strategy and direction."

In one case, in early November, A. received intelligence to the effect
that an assassination target was home with his family and other
families. When such intelligence arrives, the military system
considers whether the threshold of "collateral damage" is low enough
for carrying out the assassination.

About a month after October 7, says A., this policy was very
permissive. The house was bombed. After the attack, it turned out that
the target was outside and survived, but two women staying there were
killed and several other people were wounded. "You feel you're doing
something without any military rationale, with a risk of causing very
serious harm to people who are undoubtedly innocent, only because you
have to demonstrate an achievement."

"In the end, refusal is a political act," sums up A. "Neither I nor
anyone else in the army, including the lieutenant general who approves
the bombings, is responsible for the policy in Gaza and isn't fighting
the war individually. The fighter is the IDF as the emissary of the
government, which represents me as an Israeli. The fighter on the
ground, the pilot and the person in Home Front Command, everyone's
service is politically significant, as is their refusal, which means
objecting to what is being done in our name in Gaza. What's being done
there is a crime, one reason being its uselessness, and it's
personally harming my future as a citizen of this country."

The army responded: "The IDF is working to achieve the war's goals,
including dismantling Hamas and returning the hostages. Every
operational activity is conducted in light of these goals. The
open-fire instructions were given to all soldiers as part of their
entry into combat. These instructions reflect international law, to
which the IDF is obligated.

"The torching of buildings that isn't for essential operational
reasons contravenes the army's instructions and IDF ethics. Blowing up
and destroying buildings is done by approved and suitable means, and
in accordance with the relevant orders.

"Senior sources approve attacking targets in general, and inhabited
buildings in particular, in accordance with the General Staff firing
policy, while restricting harm to the uninvolved as much as possible.
The IDF is committed to international law and acts according to it,
attacking military targets only. The IDF also provides warnings prior
to attacks in various ways, in an attempt to limit harm to civilians
as much as possible. In the event that we receive details about a case
that deviates from the orders, the issue will be examined and dealt
with accordingly. The IDF takes a severe attitude towards calls to
refuse to report for reserve duty, and commanders examine and hanlde
every case individually."

* IDF
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* Israel-Gaza War
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* IDF refuseniks
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* Israeli refusniks
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* Gaza
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* Rafah
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* Ceasefire
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* Israel
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* Palestine
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* Israeli military
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* Israeli politics
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* Israeli peace movement
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* Benjamin Netanyahu
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* Genocide
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* Israeli killings
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* Israeli bombing
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* Hostages
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* Hamas
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* Israel-Palestine
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