The New Yorker:

As Netanyahu rallies troops for an expanded offensive, some reservists are resisting the call.

By Ruth Margalit

Last week, as Israel called up tens of thousands of reserve soldiers, Eran Tamir, an infantryman who had served four tours of duty in eighteen months, decided that he would not be among them. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had announced that the country was planning an “intensive” ground offensive in Gaza, but Tamir argued in an open letter that the administration’s rhetoric was misleading. “They will say that this is an effort to free the hostages, that this is a war of survival or resurrection, and that this time Hamas will truly be defeated—It’s a deception,” he wrote. “It’s legitimate to refuse a war whose stated goals are a complete lie. It’s legitimate to refuse a war that is our moral low point as a country.” In the letter, published on the news site Walla, he addressed other potential objectors: “They will say that you are strengthening Hamas, encouraging the next massacre.” While that may have been true at the beginning of the war, he wrote, today such statements are “deranged.”

Tamir started off with far more enthusiasm for his mission. When a Hamas-led force attacked Israeli communities in October, 2023, he was on an extended trip to the United States. After hearing the news, he got on a plane home and reported to his base in less than twenty-four hours. The cause felt urgent; Israel had just sustained its worst-ever attack, and Hamas was holding more than two hundred and fifty hostages in Gaza. Roughly three hundred thousand other Israelis felt the same call and showed up for reserve service—the largest recruitment since the Yom Kippur War in 1973. When Tamir’s mother begged him not to go, he replied, “If I don’t, I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself.” Now, he wrote, “I tell myself that I will never forgive myself if I continue to serve in this war.”

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