Over the past week, reservists, active-duty and retired members of Israeli’s armed forces and security services have challenged Prime Minister Netanyahu to put an end to the war in Gaza and act immediately to secure the release of the 59 hostages still in the possession of Hamas. As https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-04-14/ty-article/.premium/thousands-of-israeli-reservists-veterans-back-letter-urging-to-end-political-gaza-war/00000196-346e-d5cf-a3f6-356e0c090000">Haaretz documents today, what began with a letter signed April 9 by 1,000 active-duty and retired Air Force reservists transmitting the above message was repeated in similar letters in the days that followed signed by retired naval officers, by veterans and reservists of the Armored Corps, veterans of the elite signal intelligence unit, Unit 8200, and veterans of IDF’s infantry units, paratroopers and special forces. Yesterday, 250 veterans of the Mossad foreign intelligence agency, including three of its former heads, signed their own letter demanding an end to the war and the release of the hostages.
The letter by Air Force reservists charged, among other things, that the Gaza war was being prosecuted for “political and personal interests and not security interests.” The IDF Chief of Staff Eval Zamir and Air Force Commander Tomer Bar responded to the letter by dismissing the active-duty reservists, which Prime Minister Netanyahu supported, calling the organizers of the letter a “radical, marginal group” trying to fracture Israeli society from within to “topple the government.” But the letters that followed from other branches of the military and security services expressed solidarity with the fired reservists and added stronger messages of their own.
The letter from Mossad veterans called on every Israeli citizen “to demand the return of the hostages now and to stop the war. Every passing day endangers their lives…. The sanctity of life, Mr. Prime Minister, is more sacred than the god of vengeance.” Shin Bet Veterans for Democracy, which includes hundreds of Shin Bet veterans, issued a letter of support for “the letters of our brothers in arms,” which they said “express a deep breach in the general public’s trust in the October 7 government.” The government, it said, has lost the trust of its people “due to its abysmal dysfunction,” and dismissing reservists “further erodes this trust.”
