An Israel Defense Forces reservist was sent to military prison for refusing to serve either in the West Bank or the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, the Kan public broadcaster reported on Monday.
The previous day, a commander sentenced Daniel Yahalom, 32, from Haifa, to five days behind bars in a rare instance of a reservist being jailed for refusing to serve.
It came amid a growing wave of criticism from within the reserve forces over the continued war in Gaza and the failure to return the remaining 59 hostages held there by terror groups. The war started on October 7, 2023, when the Palestinian terror group Hamas led an invasion of southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw 251 abducted as hostages to Gaza.
There have been repeated calls from groups of reservists to not turn up for duty over the past two years, mostly as a protest against the government’s planned judicial overhaul, seen as undermining democracy, and against the renewed fighting in Gaza, which critics say is a political move that will endanger the lives of the remaining hostages.
There is also mounting discontent at the number of days reservists have being asked to serve since the start of the Gaza war, with some called up for hundreds of days. This has been exacerbated by government efforts to legislate an exemption for tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox youths from the draft.
Last month, the IDF said it would take strong action against reservists who refuse to serve.
Yahalom is a master’s student at the Hebrew University. He was called up for 110 days of duty with his unit in the West Bank’s Jordan Valley, Kan said.
According to the unsourced report, he declared that he would not serve in the “occupied West Bank or the ongoing war in Gaza.”
He reportedly specified he would not “take part in IDF operations” in the West Bank. During the court-martial, he also said, “I see the current campaign in Gaza as clearly illegal” and declared that he has “a moral duty to refuse.”
According to the Yesh Gvul activism group, which supports soldiers who object to Israel’s control of the West Bank, since the start of the Gaza war hundreds of reservists have refused to carry out their duties for ideological reasons.
Ishai Menuchin, spokesman for the group, told Kan that Yahalom’s incarceration was “a worsening of the attitude of the IDF and indicates growing pressure on the army due to the current wave of refusers.”
Six months ago, a reservist was court-martialed and given a two-week suspended sentence for refusing to serve. Then, in March, an Israeli Air Force reservist navigator was “permanently” dismissed from the military after he posted on social media that he would not show up for reserve duty.
Most of those who have refused have just been sent home, Kan said.
A recent wave of calls began in April with a group of roughly 1,000 Israeli Air Force veterans, the vast majority of whom are in retirement, who published a letter urging refusal to serve.
The Air Force veterans were then joined by a group of some 150 ex-Navy officers and dozens of reservist doctors who signed their names to letters demanding an immediate end to the war for the sake of the remaining hostages. Former Mossad members, ex-IDF paratroopers, and graduates of an elite military program have also given their support.
The army recently issued tens of thousands of call-up orders for IDF reservists ahead of a planned major offensive in the Gaza Strip.
Amid mass protests in 2023 against the government’s controversial judicial overhaul agenda, several groups of reservists, including some in the IAF, issued statements saying they would refuse to serve under a regime they no longer viewed as democratic.
At the height of the 2023 protests, hundreds of IDF reservists signed declarations saying they would no longer show up for reserve duty to protest the government advancing its plans to curtail the judiciary.
However, when war erupted in Gaza on October 7, 2023, with the Hamas-led attacks and massacres, nearly 300,000 reservists showed up for duty, marking the largest-ever call-up of reservists in Israel’s history.