JERUSALEM — He was once proud to be part of the Israeli military, eager to defend his homeland after the Hamas-led terrorist attack of Oct. 7, 2023.
Today, Max Kresch, 29, refuses to serve in Gaza.
The Israeli American veteran combat medic is among a growing number of reservists questioning the war’s end game and refusing to fight if called to serve, risking jail.
“The war right now is a direct threat to our future. It’s a direct threat to the future of Israelis, of civilians, of our own values,” said Kresch, whose mandatory military service ended in 2018, and who served on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon during the current war.
Amid widespread global outrage about renewed military operations in northern Gaza and large-scale protests in Israel calling for a deal to free the hostages still being held, NBC News spoke to several reservists including Kresch, all of whom have served but do not want to fight any more in Gaza.
Around 1,200 people were killed in the Oct. 7 attacks and 250 taken hostage, marking a major escalation in a decades-long conflict.
Since then, almost 64,000 people have been killed in Gaza, including thousands of children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run enclave. Much of the territory has been destroyed, and most of its population displaced. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, the world’s leading authority on food crises, has declared a famine in the north of the enclave, where the renewed military campaign is taking place.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that there is no famine and that widespread hunger is not Israel’s fault. He has also said that Israel does not intend to occupy Gaza but that Hamas must be disarmed and defeated outright.
Mounting global anger over the war is contributing to a growing threat against Jews, Kresch said, adding, “You have the Israeli government who is increasingly providing a framework for this antisemitism to grow.”
In January, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, reported there were “troubling signs of resurgent antisemitism in Europe and around the world, from attacks on Jews and harassment in public spaces to rising online hatred and more.”
While reservists have described multiple reasons for their dissent, some accuse Netanyahu, who is facing charges of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three separate cases, of prolonging the war to ensure his political survival, a claim he denies.
Others said they feel the war no longer serves any military purpose, and is endangering the remaining hostages and causing immense suffering to Palestinians.
One 28-year old reservist who received the call-up Tuesday to serve in Gaza said he was still weighing his decision, torn between his obligation to his country and his values.
“In my spiritual life, we talk about how much … life is important,” he said. “I think [life] now, how the way we see life now in Gaza, we don’t see like a life.”
“We see them like bugs,” he added.
NBC News agreed not to name him because he feared the consequences of both criticizing military service and refusing the call-up.
Signs of dissent within the military ranks surfaced shortly after Netanyahu announced the new military plans in early August, when an association of Israeli air force reserve and retired pilots called for an “immediate end to the futile war and urgent action to bring the hostages home.”
Netanyahu on Tuesday highlighted the importance of the role reservists will play in the Gaza City offensive. “Dear reserve soldiers, you are the strength that holds Israel,” he wrote on X, noting that they had to leave “work, studies and home” to report for duty.
“But the mission is still not complete,” he added.
The looming threat of jail time has not deterred some reservists who do not want to return to the front lines.
“I prefer not to go to jail, but if the question was to go to Gaza, go to jail, I’d go to jail,” said Ze’ev Bogomolny, 27, a painter who served in an artillery unit near Israel’s northern border with Lebanon. “I’m willing to put my life in captivity in order to save this place, and going to the army now is the destruction of Israel, completely.”
Bogomolny also urged other reservists to weigh their choice to serve. After the Hamas attacks, he said he felt the “right thing to do was to serve,” but, “I think the right thing now is to is for every soldier, every reserve soldier, to ask himself why and, and in what cost, is he willing to take part in this, in this war.”
Still, tens of thousands of reservists are likely to report for duty for the expanded military operations. The Israeli military has warned Palestinians to evacuate Gaza City to safe zones to avoid the new ground offensive.
An Israeli drone strike Tuesday in the Al-Mawasi safe zone in southern Gaza killed 13 people, including seven children, according to families of the victims. The Israeli military claims it did not carry out attacks in the area. Video shared with NBC News showed the bloody bodies of children laid out on stretchers and the floor of Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.
“We’re destroying the lives of Gazan civilians,” said Kresch, the Israeli American reservist, who now organizes a group called Soldiers for the Hostages. “We are killing our own hostages. We know this.”
Richard Engel and Gabe Joselow reported from Jerusalem, and Babak Dehghanpisheh from New York.
