Divided over Gaza: the Israeli soldiers who fight on and those who refuse

Times

13 hours ago

Like many young Israelis, Captain Ron Feiner had spent hundreds of days since the October 7 attacks as a reservist — in his case 270. But when he got his fourth and most recent call-up in May to serve in Gaza, he refused.
He could have cited medical or psychological reasons, so-called 'grey refusal', but the 26-year-old student at Haifa University wanted to make a point.
'I am appalled by the never-ending war in Gaza, the neglect of the hostages and the relentless death of innocents,' he said publicly. 'I am morally unable to continue serving as long as there is no change.'
Last month the platoon commander became only the second reservist to be jailed for refusal to serve.
'I had been thinking about it a long time,' he told The Sunday Times. 'But to refuse to stop serving is very unusual and can have consequences for your future.'
Feiner was speaking at his parents' house in the rural town of Ben Ami, western Galilee, where he had been staying to protect himself from the threat of Iranian missiles, many of which were fired at Haifa.
Sentenced to 25 days in prison, he ended up serving only one, because he was released on the first day of the war against Iran. The commander of the military jail wanted to reduce the number of inmates in case of a missile strike.
Like most Israelis, he was positive about that war — not just because it got him out of jail — but also seeing it as a strategic and lightning success. He was, however, 'highly suspicious about the timing' given that Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, had been facing mounting protests against the war in Gaza in the preceding weeks.
Now Feiner hopes that President Trump, in his quest for a Nobel peace prize, will push Netanyahu to end the war in Gaza, having helped him out last weekend by dropping bunker-buster bombs on Iran's nuclear plants.
Ron Dermer, Israel's minister for strategic affairs, is expected at the White House on Monday and there is widespread speculation of a new deal.
'We think within the next week we're gonna get a ceasefire,' Trump told reporters on Friday night. 'I think it's close. I just spoke with some of the people involved. It's a terrible situation.'
After 20 months of fighting, Israel is still mired in a grinding war of attrition and facing growing international condemnation. Much of the Gaza Strip lies in ruins and more than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed or have died of hunger, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. On Saturday, Israeli strikes killed at least 60 in the strip, health officials said.
The past two weeks have seen horrific scenes of hundreds of Palestinians shot while queuing at distribution centres run by a controversial new Israeli-American operation run by Trump's former faith adviser. Such images have quietened the worldwide outrage over October 7, when 1,200 Israelis were slaughtered by Hamas and more than 250 taken as hostages to Gaza.
When the attacks happened in 2023, Feiner was among thousands who volunteered immediately, having previously served for four years in the army. 'I packed my bags even before I was called,' he said. 'I was hearing what was happening at the Nova festival and got messages about people I knew who had died that day — men who had been under my command in the army. So I came home from university, took my mum's car and was ready to go.'
Many felt the same. About 300,000 Israelis showed up for reserve service — the largest recruitment since the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
Initially, Feiner was sent to the northern border with Lebanon. 'The assumption was that Hezbollah would join in the fight and maybe they would have if we hadn't gone there in such big numbers,' he said.
But as operations dragged on in Gaza, he began to have doubts. 'They said they wanted to destroy Hamas, but Hamas is still there. They said they wanted to bring the hostages back and we had a deal to do that, but they ended the ceasefire. They said they wanted to end the war as soon as possible so we could get back to our lives and education, but we're all serving as reservists for 300 or 400 days. They said they're doing all they can to prevent humanitarian crisis in Gaza and not kill civilians, but that's not what we see.'
When Feiner was called last month to join Israel's offensive, which had restarted on March 18 after the collapse of a two-month ceasefire with Hamas, he refused. Israel had once again blocked humanitarian aid from entering the strip and seized large areas of Gaza, displacing hundreds of thousands more people. Meanwhile 50 hostages remain, 24 of whom are believed to be alive.
'It was clear to me they were not trying to end the war and it's OK for them to keep hostages there in the tunnels as an excuse for Netanyahu to keep the war going and stay in power. To me that was a bright red line.'
Feiner is not alone. Like him, Yuval Ben Ari, a social worker in Haifa, had been enthusiastic about serving after October 7 — even though the former infantryman had previously quit the army in protest against operations in the West Bank.
'I was 41 but still in shape and when October 7 happened I could see this was something else and we needed people,' he said.
It took him almost a year to join a unit, but became part of the ground offensive in Lebanon from November 2024 to January. After that he was sent to Rafah, a southern city of Gaza. 'I was completely shocked,' he said opening his laptop to show photos of ruins. 'Everything was completely destroyed. This was a school, that was a university … Yet after a while it becomes your normal.'
'All I could see was shooting and killing and relocation, so two million people are now in less than 20 per cent of Gaza and constantly being moved from place to place. The Israeli army doesn't look at them as humans any more, just waiting for them to die.'
Eventually, he got a lift to the border, returned to his base and handed over his hand grenade, weapon, ammunition and combat gear. 'I told them what you are doing is wrong, apart from the fact you are sacrificing the hostages, and needs to stop.'
He wrote an anonymous article for the liberal paper Haaretz headlined: 'What I saw in Gaza: A Soldier's Warning.' Not only did he lambast the destruction and killing, he also warned: 'The reserves are collapsing. Anyone who shows up is already indifferent, bothered by personal problems or by other matters. Children, lay-offs, studies, spouses.'
With the war now going for 632 days, large numbers of reservists have been in uniform for more than half of them and tens of thousands have served for more than 200 days — a magnitude unprecedented in Israel's history. Spending so much time away from family and work, people have lost jobs and relationships.
However, helicopters flying over the beaches of Tel Aviv bringing the wounded to the military hospital tell of another cost. Since the start of the war, 435 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza and 6,000 injured.
Many reservists have been quietly refusing to go back. Some reports suggest attendance has dropped to as little as 50 to 60 per cent. Recruiters are resorting to advertising on Facebook. For a military that depends heavily on reservists to fight its wars, it's a looming crisis and has made even more unpopular Netanyahu's push for a law enshrining the widespread military exemption for Haredi or ultra-orthodox Jews. Haredi parties are key allies in his governing coalition.
Such a move has angered the more committed reservists. Matan Yaffe, 40, a Harvard graduate and social entrepreneur, who has served 350 days since October 7, admits as a married father of five boys aged four to 12, that 'military service has affected everything — my wife worries, I miss my sons and I had to step away from running my NGO'.
He said: 'But October 7 affected our existence, whether we could live here or not and the price we're prepared to pay for being here.'
As for many, it was personal. A friend's parents-in-law were murdered in Be'eri kibbutz and another friend, Omri Miran, is still being held hostage.
On his way to enlist, Yaffe set up a crowdfunding emergency appeal which raised eight million shekels for the victims of the attacks. He has done two tours of Gaza from November 2023 to January last year followed by April to June as well as two stints in the north of Israel. He was called up again last month.
Like Feiner and Ben Ari, he was shocked by what he saw, but in a different way. 'What struck me most was I can hardly remember a single home that didn't have bombs, ammunition, RPGs — often in the kids' rooms. Or they had entrances to tunnels. We have all this discussion about how much Hamas is being supported by the people, but when you get there you see it's 90 per cent. It's mind-blowing.'
Asked why so many Palestinians are being killed, including women and children, he insists: 'Hamas want destruction and killing. We need the people of Gaza to tell Hamas we don't want you.'
'I'm not saying there aren't atrocities happening in Gaza and some might be committed by us,' he added. 'But this war was forced on us by October 7 and we're not killing people or demolishing buildings because we want to — it's because we must diminish the threat.'
'No one wants to be there,' he said. 'I'm a social entrepreneur who sets up NGOs to make the world better. It's shit to be there, but I want to be able to raise my sons and know no one will be able to slaughter my wife or take them into the tunnels of Gaza.'
But the longer the war goes on, with a mounting death toll and images of starving children spread on social media, the harder it is for Israel to claim, as its officials often do, that its military is the most moral army in the world.
Last week, The Sunday Times spoke to a lawyer attached to a battalion in Gaza who explained how they signed off on attacks. He said the three criteria for an offensive were: 'distinction' (whether it is distinguished as a military target), 'proportionality', and 'precautions'.
'This is complex urban warfare fighting an enemy embedded in the population and you cannot imagine how much we are doing everything to avoid civilian casualties,' he said. 'It's like fighting with our hands tied behind our backs. We use the smallest munitions to avoid collateral damage. Not everything is perfect but if we there is any reports of misconduct, we investigate.'
Among those investigations was a report released on Friday from unnamed Israeli soldiers who said they had been told to fire at crowds near food distribution sites to keep them away from Israeli military positions, even though they posed no threat. Netanyahu dismissed the reports as 'blood libel'.
Israel has been accused of war crimes in the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice.
'I've been in the aid sector 42 years and never seen anything like this,' said Dr Younis Al-Khatib, head of Palestine Red Crescent Society, who was in London last week meeting parliamentarians and ministers. 'What's going on in Gaza, with the ignoring of international law and militarisation of aid delivery, is setting a dangerous precedent.'
Though his organisation has 1,000 staff in Gaza and several thousand volunteers, he said they are 'useless' in the face of a near-total Israeli blockade on water, medicine, fuel and food.
'We're facing an iron wall,' he said. 'Children are dying from starvation and we cannot do anything. We've reached a point where we're useless, we're doing less day after day.'
Although being in Israel can sometimes feel like a parallel world with little discussion of the plight of people in Gaza, things are changing, said Yali Maron and Maayan Dak, both human rights activists. The pair organise weekly silent protests outside airbases in Israel, holding up photos of children killed in Gaza with their names and dates of death.
'We live near a base,' explains Maron, 'and since the beginning I've been shouting at the skies: 'Stop! You are killing people.' So we decided to go directly to the people who can stop it.'
'For a long time it was taboo to say anything against what was happening in Gaza but in the last few months since Israel ended the ceasefire that has changed. Now thousands of people are protesting.'
In April an open letter was published, signed by 1,000 air force reservists and retired officers. 'The continuation of the war does not contribute to any of its declared goals and will lead to the death of the hostages,' they wrote. 'Every day that passes is further risking their lives.'
Since then similar letters have appeared from almost every branch of the military, including elite fighting and intelligence units, and highly decorated commanders with more than 12,000 signatures.
One retired general, Amiram Levin, even said it was time for soldiers to think about disobeying orders. 'The risk of being dragged into war crimes and suffering a fatal blow to the Israel Defence Forces and our social ethos make it impossible to stand idly by,' he wrote.
Nobody feels more strongly about the need to end the war than the families of hostages still being held in Gaza.
Dani Miran, 80, has a long white beard he has been growing since his son, Omri, 48, was abducted from the Nahal Oz kibbutz where he worked as a gardener and Shiatsu teacher. Standing in what is known as Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, he wears a T-shirt with a photo of Omri playing with his daughter, Roni, now three. 'She asks about him every day,' he said.
While his two other sons are more hawkish, believing the war in Gaza is needed to exert military pressure on Hamas to release their brother, he wants it over. 'I feel Netanyahu is more interested in his own survival than bringing back the hostages but maybe now he is on a high from Iran he can turn to our abandoned children.'
On Friday night some family members met Marco Rubio, US Secretary of State, and his wife to convey the same message.
'Now the war with Iran is over we should make ending the war in Gaza the most important thing,' said Ilan Dalal, father of Guy Gilboa-Dalal, 24, who was kidnapped from the Nova festival along with his best friend, Evyatar David.
'We know from others released they are being held in a very narrow tunnel just one metre wide, beaten, starved and kept chained most of the time. The tunnel is booby-trapped and there could be an accident anytime — we need to get them out.'