Every day for two months, Michael Ofer Ziv spent hours watching grainy, black-and-white footage of the Gaza Strip from a tiny room across the border.
As an operations commander, he was tracking Israeli forces inside Gaza and approving airstrikes.
Every day, he said, his unit had a certain quota to fill.
“They will tell us, today you have seven, today you have nine… you sometimes argue for more, but you will never fire less than you’re given,” he told CNN in an interview. CNN has reached out to the Israeli military for comment on his claims.
One by one, buildings blew up on his screen like a hypnotic reel of destruction.
At first, it was easy to forget that those images were real, and not just a video game playing on a screen. But the more he stepped out of that war room, the more he was exposed to the reality of those strikes.
One minute, he was looking at soundless footage of airstrikes he ordered; the next, he was on his phone watching unfiltered videos of Palestinians shrieking, carrying their loved ones who had been killed because of the Israeli military.
“This is happening in real life and has an actual effect on those people… at some point, your brain kind of cannot disconnect those two things anymore,” he said.
Once he connected those dots, there was no going back.
Asked for comment, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told CNN that Ofer Ziv’s claims around targeting were “baseless, unfounded, and misrepresent the sensitivity, precaution, and strict obligation to international law with which the IDF selects and pursues its targets.”
Like thousands of Israeli reservists, Ofer Ziv was called up to war following the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on October 7, in which at least 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 others taken hostage, Israeli authorities said. He knew the army had to respond but was concerned about what that response might look like because of how widespread the language of revenge was.
His concerns were soon validated, he said.
In May, he and 40 other reservists signed an open letter declaring they would refuse to serve Israel’s war in Gaza again after the IDF launched a military offensive in Rafah, southern Gaza, where many of the civilians displaced by the conflict had fled.
They readily acknowledge that they represent a tiny minority of reservists who oppose the war, but they hope that their decision to take a public stand will spark a debate in Israeli society and put pressure on the government to prioritize a ceasefire deal.
“If we are deciding to go into Rafah instead of making a deal, I felt like it was a statement of us saying we care more about killing Palestinians and destroying Gaza than we (do) about actually finishing this, actually having a long-term solution, actually releasing the hostages,” Ofer Ziv said.
His conscience just wouldn’t allow him to continue. He couldn’t fathom the colossal number of casualties inflicted upon Palestinian civilians.
“There is also a decision here to not be as careful as we can be, or even be careless and disregard human life,” he said.
“I can count on my hand the amount of times we were told we are not allowed to shoot at something… the main vibe was we shoot first, ask questions later,” he added.
In its comment to CNN, the IDF said it was “fully committed to respecting all applicable international legal obligations” and “to mitigating civilian harm” during military operations.
“The IDF does not aim to inflict excessive damage to civilian infrastructure and strikes exclusively on the grounds of military necessity and in strict accordance with international law,” it said.
