Israeli deserters against Netanyahu: ‘I would re-enlist if we were fighting to get the hostages back’

Assaf, 29, recalls one of his nights as an Israeli soldier in Gaza: “I had the telescopic sight and the night vision scope. I remember aiming at his face and looking at him, ready to shoot as soon as he did something. But I looked at him and it was not the face of someone who posed a threat to us.” He reflects on the despair, emptiness and discomfort he felt after leaving the Strip, where he and the men of his unit spent almost a month fighting Hamas to prevent a repeat of the carnage of October 7 last year. But at the same time, he saw how, in addition to killing civilians and destroying the enclave, the release of the 100 of his compatriots still held hostage by Hamas and other Palestinian groups is not being prioritized. He suspects that the main obstacle to this is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Assaf (who prefers not to give his real name) is one of the 130 soldiers, regular troops and reservists, who signed a letter addressed to Netanyahu on October 7, the first anniversary of the war. In it they declared themselves deserters. The main reason given is the abandonment of those hostages, although they also point to the deaths of innocent Palestinians among the 43,000 Gazans who have already lost their lives. The war, they say in reference to the captives, is “a death sentence” for their “brothers and sisters.” The text has also been sent to Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant and the head of the Armed Forces, General Herzi Halevi. “Many hostages have died from the bombings of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), many more than those who have been rescued in military operations,” states the letter.

In addition to Assaf, who has no doubts about supporting a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine, two other military officers have agreed to be interviewed by EL PAÍS, by name and surname. Everyone knows that their public gesture of protest made the prime minister very uncomfortable, but they do not regret it. Netanyahu asked that the full weight of the law fall on them, in addition to implying that they were not patriots, according to the newspaper Haaretz. Asked about the matter, a spokesman for the army simply played down the number of signatories compared to the hundreds of thousands of troops that make up the IDF.

The testimonies of these three reservists offer a reality of the war far removed from that usually given by military spokesmen and government leaders. And they launch harsh criticisms of the way in which a conflict is developing that they consider to be entrenched, which is why they have not returned to uniform. Assaf has fought in Gaza and the West Bank; Max Kresch, 28, has been deployed on the Lebanese border, and Michael Ofer-Ziv, 29, has decided, among other things, which places to bomb in the Strip from a military operations room on Israeli soil.

After more than two months of having a “broad view” of the military occupation of Gaza and the movements of his unit through his screens, Ofer-Ziv finished what was his only and last rotation at the end of 2023. A few days earlier, an event that left him “devastated” and continues to affect him mentally was the death of three Israeli hostages at the hands of his fellow soldiers who had approached IDF troops waving a white flag and shouting in Hebrew. “How many incidents like that happened with Palestinians, who were simply raising a white flag, trying to run away from the war and ended up shot by the military? There were many such cases,” he confirms, aware that protocols are often not followed and civilians, overwhelmingly Palestinians, are killed.

“We were killing a lot of Hamas fighters and attacking any military target we found. I think we set Hamas back 10 or 20 years in terms of its military capability,” Assaf said, adding that this was already achieved earlier this year, when he had already left the Strip. “I don’t think going from house to house and demolishing them all, even if it’s a military site, is worth the cost in human lives,” he added. “If we were fighting to get the hostages back, I would 100% [re-enlist] and be willing to risk my life to get my compatriots back,” he explained, before saying that every time a possible agreement comes closer, it gets bogged down. “I think it’s the prime minister, but we can’t know for sure.”

“Diabolical choice”

“Many Israelis believe that it is justified to hate the Palestinians in Gaza because they support Hamas. But in the same way, there are many Israelis who support Bibi,” as the prime minister is popularly known, argues Kresch. He does not hesitate to compare Netanyahu with Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader recently killed in the Strip, “two leaderships that are really harmful to their people.” It is not a question of choosing one or the other “as if they were football teams, because both represent a diabolical choice,” says Kresch, while stressing that the current government is leading Israel down the path of “racism” and “literally, terrorism.”

“From day one, I never had faith in him [Netanyahu], but I still risked my life for him,” he says. Kresch posted, and still maintains, a message on his Facebook profile in which he criticized the “kill them all” atmosphere that surrounded his deployment on the front lines in Lebanon. That comment raised the ire of his comrades and, weeks later, he was removed from his post, although his commanders never linked him to that post. From outside, he says, he received numerous expressions of support.

For Assaf, the fact that Palestinian militias are now reorganizing in some areas of the Strip does not mean that they have the capacity to attack Israel, much less to repeat October 7. “But they will continue to want to kill us if we do not push for a political solution,” he adds. With the battle won at the military level, he believes that the priority should have been the captives, but the attacks continued and “many hostages have been killed directly by the IDF or by Hamas in circumstances of pressure from the army” which in his view should have been avoided. “The price we are paying is greater than the achievements we obtain,” he adds, remembering especially the three comrades of his unit who fell between August and September, in the rotation that he refused to join and whom he said goodbye to in the cemetery.

“I completely disagree with those who say that there are no innocent people in Gaza. […] I am sure that among the two million inhabitants, many of them are not members of Hamas or sympathetic to Hamas,” says Assaf, describing a climate of growing tension and hatred fuelled, above all, by the supremacist positions of some ministers and far-right leaders. Kresch expresses similar sentiments: “I have experienced a very, very hostile atmosphere of revenge and racism against Arabs. And I have several Arab friends and I like to get involved in activism for coexistence.”

Ofer-Ziv, like Kresch, had participated in anti-Netanyahu protests before the war and was highly critical of the most right-wing government in the country’s history, which he describes as “terrible.” But he did not hesitate, as did Assaf, to enlist after October 7, 2023, when the war began with the Hamas-led attack, which caused some 1,200 deaths and saw 250 people kidnapped, according to official figures.

They feel that the burden of obligation weighed on them, but none of them believe that they will suffer “reprisals” or “revenge.” They argue that their objective as reservists was to prevent another similar massacre from taking place and to facilitate the return of the hostages, although the reality on the ground was different. They believe that the objective of avoiding another massacre is being partially achieved, despite the tens of thousands of civilian deaths. But they think that military operations hinder the return home of the captives. Not wearing the uniform — something frowned upon by much of Israeli society — is “the way to recover the hostages and save the lives of the soldiers,” according to Assaf, who says he does not accept criticism from politicians who have never gone into combat.

For Kresch, the hardest part came after his mission. He separated from his partner, froze his studies, had to return to his parents’ home and, in addition, saw the government abandon him. He only found help in organizations outside the state, his family, and friends. “We have been through a tragedy. But it is very important to remember that the Arabs are not our enemies. Our enemy is Hamas,” he stresses. The real conflict, he reflects, is not between Israelis and Palestinians, but between those who want war and those who want peace.

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