Israel’s Tel Aviv Ron Finer, the platoon commander, served Israel for 270 days, first assisting in the fortification of its northern border and then assisting in the destruction of weapons stockpiles in Lebanon. As his nation fought the militant organization Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, he felt that although the task was difficult, the fight was just.
He was emotionally scarred from the consecutive tours: he barely avoided getting shot in the head on his final trip, and six of the soldiers he fought alongside perished.
But when Israel broke a ceasefire with Hamas in March, he said it was like a switch flipping, completely altering his perspective on the fight.
“It was so obvious to me this time. Before they take over the entire Gaza Strip, they don’t want this conflict to finish,” Finer, 26, stated.
He decided to do so. He made the decision to turn down a call-up to fight in the Gaza Strip for a fourth tour.
Finer is part of a new anti-war movement that is starting to emerge among Israeli soldiers. He has joined a chorus of voices, including human rights advocates and hostage families, who have been demonstrating throughout Israel in favor of an immediate truce with Hamas and the release of all hostages still detained in Gaza.
According to a national security research group, Israel has already lost tens of billions of dollars and roughly 900 service members in its protracted conflict in Gaza, which is almost two years old. According to soldiers, they are exhausted. Approximately 1,000 reservists signed a petition this spring demanding an end to the war. More reservists are covertly avoiding new summons up by citing work or health concerns. Finer is one of several who have been imprisoned for rejecting. Lowonfighters are being run by the military. A request for comment from NPR was not answered by the Israeli military.
According to Finer, the nation is at a turning point.
“Another day we suspend [a ceasefire] is another day Israeli soldiers could die and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the people dying every day also from hunger and also from like airstrikes,” he continues.
A war with no end
Finer was one of six soldiers and reservists interviewed by NPR this year who had declined to serve. Some voiced ethical concerns, while others questioned whether fighting in Gaza was strategically worthwhile.
They all expressed disillusionment with Israel’s withdrawal from a temporary ceasefire in March and condemned the Cabinet’s decision last week to occupy Gaza City, the last major territory in Gaza not already occupied by Israeli forces.
“War is a possibility, and it was decided upon for us. Ella, a former reservist who resigned earlier this year due to uncertainty over the justification for war extension, says, “I think there are always other options.” Since she was an intelligence officer handling secret material, she requested that just her first name be used.
Some of the very people Israel needs to staff its military have strongly objected to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim on Sunday that “Israel has no choice” but to pursue an escalation of the conflict.
“I spent 23 years of my life serving in Gaza. During a Palestinian revolt in the early 2000s that became known as the Second Intifada, Matan Vilnai, a former major general and commander of Israel’s southern command, which includes Gaza, declares, “I know Gaza by heart.”
In an open letter earlier this month, Vilnai joined over 600 former top military and intelligence officers in pleading with President Trump to put pressure on Netanyahu to halt the war, claiming that Israel had already met its military objectives in Gaza.
“There is nothing we can do in Gaza. We have to leave Gaza. Vilnai explains his decision to sign the letter by saying, “And we achieve nothing by dominating Gaza.”
“We have to stop taking part in this terrible ritual if we want to save everyone who lives here. At a recent anti-war demonstration in Tel Aviv, Finer addressed a rapt crowd of protesters, saying, “Each of us, in our own way.” “Combatants must put an end to combat. Reservists are required to cease reporting for duty.
“Amputees of the soul”
According to Gaza health officials, the war has killed or starved more than 61,000 Palestinians.
However, the rise in army suicide deaths is a statistic that has caused far greater concern in Israel. In July alone, seven incidents were reported, primarily involving soldiers who had just returned from combat in Gaza.
Soldiers who fought in Israel’s past wars, including the 2014 war in Gaza, have been camped outside the main rehabilitation facility run by Israel’s defense ministry, pleading for mental trauma to be recognized as a legitimate wartime injury as the psychological toll of fighting the conflict in Gaza grows.
“I was a young child with goals, aspirations, life motivation, and a future before I entered. I had it everything. I was dead when I came out. Omar Amsalam, 32, who served in the Gaza War in 2014, describes himself as a “walking person without a soul.” “We don’t wear tags that read ‘combat veteran with PTSD.'” You cannot see that we are amputees of the soul, even if we have arms and legs.
Nadav Weiman is employed by Breaking the Silence, a group of ex-Israeli soldiers that gather testimonials regarding Israel’s control of the West Bank and, more recently, the conflict in Gaza.According to Weiman, the group is receiving twice as many anonymous reports as it did prior to the conflict, primarily from soldiers engaged in combat in Gaza who are distressed by what they are seeing or being ordered to do.
“You know, when you interview a lot of people, you know that when somebody speaks very monotone like this, trying to avoid or not being attached to what he did, that’s the hardest thing,” Weiman adds.
Even many who do back Israel’s army worry that it is squandering its resources on a conflict that will yield no further strategic advantages.
“No mother in the world can comprehend the emotions involved in sending her son to war. However, we took action because we wished to defend our nation,” Agamit Gelb explains. She assisted her son in reporting for service on October 7, 2023, following an attack on Israel by Hamas-led militants that resulted in the deaths of approximately 1,200 persons and the capture of 251 hostages.
To demand a truce, she marched south around the Nahal Oz kibbutz, which is close to Israel’s border with Gaza, in early August along with several hundred other mothers of current and former soldiers. She claims that because she believes her second son would soon be conscripted, her campaigning has become even more urgent.
“Our sons’ nearly two-year-old conflict needs to stop right away. “At the moment, fighting only kills more and more soldiers in Gaza and doesn’t bring any hostages back,” Gelb argues.
“A religious war”
The political strain arising over the purpose of Israel’s attack in Gaza is reflected in Gelb’s worries.
Netanyahu has insisted that the goal of Israel’s attack in Gaza is to eliminate Hamas and liberate the roughly 20 hostages that are thought to still be alive. It is estimated that thirty of them perished while in captivity.
Two far-right ministers who have much more ambitious goals are Netanyahu’s political pillars. They haveexplicitlyand repeatedly said Gaza should be destroyed, Palestiniansremovedtoanothercountry, and Jewish peopleallowedto build settlements in Gaza again as they did until 2005, when Israel decided to dismantle those settlements and withdraw military forces stationed on the ground in Gaza.
Many soldiers and reservists stated they could not accept these ministers’ ambition to annex and colonize Gaza.
“This mission does not have any military targets. It is no longer a military mission. It has turned into a conflict of religion. And I’m not willing to risk my life fighting other people’s wars,” says one former reservist tank commander, who requested anonymity because he fears being attacked abroad for serving in Israel’s military.
He said he had fought four tours in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, and served on missions attempting to free some of the hostages taken by Hamas.
“I now acknowledge that it’s a dream. We couldn’t have any military way of bringing the people back,” he says. On the other hand,nearly 150 hostageshave been returned through negotiated deals, he points out. For more people to come home, he says, the fighting needs to end.
Alon Avital and Itay Stern contributed reporting from Tel Aviv, Israel.
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