'Sentiment of revenge': Former IDF soldier describes 'morally questionable' military behaviour

"How did we get to a point where we kill our own hostages?", Michael Ofer-Ziv said in an interview with ITV News Correspondent Peter Smith

A former IDF reservist has described a "sentiment of revenge" among Israel's army, which he described as carrying out activities in Gaza which were "morally questionable at best".

"It became clearer and clearer that the main focus of the war kind of shifted from focusing on creating terms to release the hostages to something else," Michael Ofer-Ziv told ITV News Correspondent Peter Smith.

"A lot of [soldiers] still have this sentiment of revenge, of beating them so hard this time that they won't be able to stand back up," he said.

Michael is one of 130 IDF soldiers refusing to fight in the current conflict.

He said that "the tipping point" for him was the killing of three Israeli hostages by Israeli forces during a ground operation in Gaza in December.

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Alon Shamriz, 26, Samer Al-Talalka, 25, and Yotam Haim, 26, were killed on December 15 in the Gaza City neighbourhood of Shijaiyah, after Israeli troops incorrectly identified them as a threat.

The military said at the time it was investigating the incident and that it believed they had either escaped their captors or been abandoned when they were shot.

It was Israel's first acknowledgement of harming hostages in a war that it says is largely aimed at rescuing them.

"In this situation, a few soldiers had made the decision to shoot at them and kill them. First of all, it was devastating news to hear in Israel, like just the news of having three hostages being killed because... everything kind of was framed in the attempt of releasing hostages and the fact that three of them died, and then later on realising that the three of them were killed by our own people..." Michael said.

He added it was important to acknowledge that it's "not below Hamas to use those kinds of tactics" but "this does not mean that you can shoot anyone who's waving a white flag".

The incident was ultimately what led Michael to leave the Israeli army.

"[Soldiers] are very afraid for their lives, for obvious reasons, and very on edge. But the thing is there are, or there are supposed to be, very clear rules of engagement... There's supposed to be repercussions when you're not following those.

"How did we get to a point where we kill our own hostages? How did we get to a point where we're so light on the trigger or so driven by our fears or anger or something, that we get to a point where someone just sort of straight up executes a hostage?

"It made it so, so clear and apparent that this is it for me, that I cannot participate in this anymore."

The killings in December led to protests in the streets of Israel's capital Tel Aviv, with demonstrators calling on the Israeli government to get back to the negotiating table to secure the release of remaining hostages.

On October 7, 2023 Hamas-led militants killed around 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians, and took another 250 hostage. Around 100 of the captives are still held in Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded tens of thousands, according to local health authorities. More than half were women and children.

It has also caused major devastation across the territory and displaced around 90% of its population of 2.3 million.

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