Despite having been released from reserve duty approximately a year and a half before October 7, 2023, when news of the Hamas massacre broke, Yonah (not his real name) called his commander and showed up to his unit.
“I took [command of] a tank from one of the commanders when it made more sense that I would command over it – at the end of the day, I am an officer, and I am pretty experienced working with tanks and in command,” he said.
He has since served around 240 days in reserves in Gaza and the Gaza border region and was made deputy company commander of his armored corps unit.
His prior release from reserve duty had been on an ideological basis, Yonah explained, saying that he had refused to serve in the West Bank.
A law intern and activist for human rights who describes his view as “closest to liberal Left,” Yonah felt that he wouldn’t be able to handle the complexity of serving as a reservist in the West Bank after doing human rights work there.
He assured the IDF that he was still willing to serve in reserves on other missions but was released nonetheless.
Letter to the IDF
Just before the end of his most recent round of reserve duty, Yonah joined the nearly 140 soldiers who have signed a letter stating that they cannot continue their IDF service if the government does not work towards a hostage deal.
“For some of us, a red line has already been crossed; for others, it is getting closer. The day is coming when we, with broken hearts, will stop reporting for service,” read the letter, addressed to the prime minister, defense minister, and IDF chief of staff.
“The war in Gaza is a death sentence for the hostages,” said the letter, adding that, “today it is clear that the continuation of the war in Gaza is not just delaying the return of the hostages, but endangering their lives.”
In spite of his signature on this letter, and in spite of his previous release from the IDF, Yonah’s signature on this letter is not a wholehearted resignation from reserves, he explained.
He isn’t sure that if called again, he won’t report. His thoughts are with his soldiers who count on him, but he signed the letter as “an expression of the deep frustration with the situation we are in [and] of my complete lack of trust in Israel’s government and decision-makers.”
“I feel that this war is continuing into a pointless war – an unending pointless war,” he added.
“It’s obvious that there are significant forces, that in some regards are the decision-makers in the country, who are leading us to a pointless and strategy-less war.”
These forces place very little value on human life, including for the hostages and those living in the area, as well as for the soldiers, he added.
In signing the letter, he is making the statement that he “won’t be willing to serve in any framework that the Israeli government leads us into.”
YONAH HIGHLIGHTED that in spite of all this, he understands the need for a strong military defending Israel, and knows that Israel was forced to go to war on October 7. This understanding, along with his mistrust of Israel’s leadership and doubts about the war, have put him in an impossible position.
Israel “did not choose this war,” Yonah said, saying he stands behind his decision to join the IDF and defend the Gaza border region but also behind his decision not to wash his hands of responsibility for his actions now.
Yonah described a severe breach of trust between Israel’s leadership and its soldiers.
“I have not met many reservist soldiers recently whose faith in the State of Israel has not been lost.”
“They feel the State of Israel has betrayed them; they feel the price they are paying is high [and] in the name of something that does not clearly serve our military interests,” he said.
These reservists “understand that at the end we will all pay for the abandonment of the hostages, for the destruction of Gaza, and for the lack of acceptance that at the end we will need a diplomatic normalization.”
No trust in his commander
Danny (not his real name), another reservist who signed the letter, described an incident in which he wasn’t able to put his trust in his commanders, and which caused him to leave his reserve duty.
A medic in the Paratroopers Brigade who served in reserves in Gaza for months following October 7, Danny says he participated in the Israel-Hamas War “by coincidence.”
Danny, who describes his political affiliation as Left, had intended to tell his reserves unit he was leaving on October 8 due to moral objections surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when the war caught him off-guard.
“Leaving [reserves] as a platoon medic at the moment when I am needed most did not feel right, but I also went in with many qualms,” he said. These qualms stayed with him throughout his reserve service, leaving him questioning whether or not he should be there.
The moment when this conflict came to a head was when his unit was given an order to burn a house down, and when Danny asked his commander why they were burning it, the reasons he was given were “just stupid.”
“We are burning houses for nothing. Israel is burning houses for nothing and destroying things for nothing,” he said.
Asked if he remembers the reasons his commander gave him for the order to burn the house, Danny says he won’t forget them.
“He told me two things – two things that are simply stupid. The first thing he said was that we don’t want to expose our fighting methods, which really is meaningless [when fighting from] a house,” he said, explaining that the changes made to houses to allow IDF soldiers to use them are both reversible and not really secret.
“It’s not something surprising; it’s warfare methods – it’s not some secret Raphael weapon.”
The second reason his commander gave him was that his unit might accidentally leave military equipment behind them, Danny said.
This is “also absurd,” Danny added, saying he would do a scan for equipment to ensure nothing was left behind.
“When I say a house, I mean a building,” Danny explains, saying that the burning of the house left two families homeless and that other platoons in his company also burned homes.
“So all the houses in the neighborhood are burned,” he said, adding that this made “black smoke that you can’t forget – of people becoming homeless.”
This incident brought to a head and decided the dilemma that Danny had grappled with since before the war.
“I remember being paradoxically relieved,” he said of being given the order and explanation. “It was the first time that things were simple.”
Danny also highlighted his inability to depend on his commanders to enforce IDF guidelines. A game developed in his unit in which soldiers would take masabahas (prayer beads) from Gazan homes as souvenirs, comparing and collecting them.
“It got to the point where people would go into a house and scan it and all that interested them were the masabahas,” he said, adding the caveat that these searches did also have a military purpose, and would sometimes turn up weapons.
“That is a classic example of how things look [in Gaza]; everything gets mixed up,” Danny said.
This created a situation where soldiers could do whatever they wanted and then claim it had been done professionally as part of an operational need, Danny added.
He also commented on graffiti left in Gazan homes by his unit, saying he would take markers he had handed out to sign tourniquets away from the soldiers in his unit because they were being used for graffiti.
He brought these concerns to one of his commanders. “I was very angry at how they allowed that lawlessness – the graffiti and the looting,” he said.
He said his commander told him, “Listen, you are right, but I don’t have the resources to enforce it at the moment.”
The IDF responded to a request for comment on the accusations, saying that “the IDF has been fighting a murderous terror organization since October 7, and working to achieve the goals of the war, including dismantling the Hamas terror organization and returning the hostages.”
“Burning buildings without a necessary operational need is against the law and the values of the IDF.”
“Cases where there are suspicions of the law being broken or orders being defied are checked in depth. Where there is suspicion of a criminal offense, there will also be an investigation opened by the military police,” it added.
Yonah summed up the dilemma that leaves him torn between the need to protect his country and understanding of the role of the military in making diplomatic agreements possible, and his lack of trust in the county’s leadership and belief that the state does not want to reach agreements or save the hostages.
“The State of Israel has put me in an unbearable position. On a personal level I feel betrayed by it and am angry at it,” he said.
“It is not clear what the essence of this war is, it is not clear what its strategy is, its described as a forever-war, strong forces in today’s government talk openly about renewing Jewish settlement in Gaza,” he said.
“Even when there were concrete [agreements] on the table, Israel chose not to take them,” he said.
ADDRESSING THOSE who claim that the IDF must be kept free from politics, Yonah expressed incredulity, saying that war, in and of itself, is a political thing.
At the end of the day, Yonah emphasized, he is the one leading soldiers into battle, taking lives, and seeing the destruction in Gaza.
Danny expressed the urgency of the fight for the hostages and the reason he thinks refusing to serve is the way to move it forward.
“The fight [to free the hostages] needs to be radicalized. We can’t let people sit in captivity forever.”
“It could have been me and you,” he said.
“The war is not bringing back the hostages; it is killing them. It is delaying their return; it is risking them.”
“Dozens of hostages have been killed; we don’t even know the precise numbers,” he said, adding that hostages “have been killed directly by the actions of the IDF – whether we shot them or whether Hamas killed them when we got close,” he said.
“We can’t keep killing them, and we can’t keep delaying their return.”