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Brit Tzedek v'Shalom
Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace
New York Jewish Week
July 23, 2004
Israeli Pilot: This Fight’s Not Right
IDF captain comes here to explain why he and others won’t kill for the sake of settlements
By Jonathan Mark
In 1967, Yonatan Shapira’s father flew his IDF jet low over the Mediterranean, making a swooping left turn in a devastating bombing run over Egyptian air bases. He spent the rest of the week flying in combat over the West Bank and Golan Heights.
Capt. Yonatan Shapira, 32, followed his father into the Air Force, flying his helicopter on more than 100 rescue and assault missions, and was trained to fly in the famed Black Hawk Squadron.
But in October he signed a letter with 26 other pilots announcing his refusal to fight in the West Bank again.
The “Pilots’ Letter,” as it became known, declared that orders that led to the harming of “innocent civilians” were “illegal and immoral, and are a direct result of the ongoing occupation which is corrupting all of Israeli society. Perpetuation of the occupation is fatally harming the security of the state of Israel and its moral strength.”
Shapira was dismissed from the Israel Defense Forces.
Ami Ayalon, the former head of the Shin Bet internal security agency, said he “has a lot of empathy” for the pilots. In May, Attorney General Menachem Mazuz told the Israel Bar Association that refusal to serve and civil disobedience for political reasons are an integral part of the Israeli reality in the last few decades,” with the courts making a distinction between a total refusal to serve and selective refusal.
Shapira’s refusal is selective. Visiting The Jewish Week earlier this month while in New York to talk about his cause, Shapira said he loved Israel dearly and would volunteer to fly in combat through the West Bank skies in a war of defense or a war of survival, but insisted the current war was neither. This war, he said, was to preserve the settlements, and that is not a war worth fighting.
In April he lit a torch at a joint Naqba-Israel Independence Day ceremony; Naqba is the Palestinian term for the “tragedy” of Israel’s creation.
Shapira told the participants, “We have occupied millions of people … they have been controlled by us, ‘the master race.’ During hundreds of flights above the territories, I saw over the years how the apartheid land was flourishing,” with settlements protected by military bases between them, while “evil and injustice shouted and are still shouting to the skies.”
And yet, following a lecture at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun on the Upper West Side, Shapira said that when a Palestinian woman commandeered the microphone and said she wanted a Palestinian state from the sea to the river, “I hear that so much from Palestinians back home that I didn’t think anything of it.
“It’s quite obvious that they will have to give up their dreams of having it all, and we’ll have to give up our dream of having the West Bank. You have to be connected to reality.”
If, like his father, he had been in the IDF in 1967, he would not have refused to fight.
“We had to show our Arab neighbors that Israel would exist and will exist forever,” Shapira said. “We rightfully captured the territories, but we said it was a bargaining chip. It was very right and smart to have that kind of chip. We had no intention of ruling over so many people.”
If the IDF was only in the West Bank to fight terrorists, that would be fine, he said. But soldiers have become heartless policemen, Shapira said, “just to punish and show the Palestinians who’s boss. Yes, [some Palestinians launch] terrible and cruel terror attacks against us, but when you punish a whole society you create more hostility and terrorists, not less.”
When Palestinians kill Jews indiscriminately, why doesn’t that create Jewish terrorists?
“We don’t take Palestinian values as an example for us,” Shapira said. “We came here to create a Jewish land with Jewish values. We will not win this war using their means or adopting the behavior of the enemy. Our suffering is tremendous. I know it well. I know it too well.”
He knows it notably through his volunteer work with Selah, a group that assists victims of Palestinian terror, particularly new immigrants.
“We sit next to his or her bed, and when the victim can talk we ask if there is some way we can help — emotionally, medically, legally or financially,” Shapira said. “I’d take orphans or other children from these families on trips to the Negev, to help them become more attached to the land of Israel and Zionism and not lose hope. We’d bring some of these families to my parents’ house for Chanukah or other holidays.”
But didn’t Israel make generous offers for peace that were answered with war?
“We can go through history,” Shapira said, “and show that they started, that we started, that they started.” He insists that neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis are fulfilling their obligations under Oslo.
Shapira said there are now nearly 1,300 soldiers in the Refuser Solidarity Network, admittedly a small fraction of the IDF, “but this is just the tip of the iceberg. We know of pilots who tell their commander they won’t fly in the territories but if the commander won’t make a fuss, the pilot won’t make a fuss by signing letters and joining protests.”
Shapira said he is concerned “that soldiers are losing their belief in the system” because of the callousness toward Palestinian civilian casualties. A fighter jet or a brigade of tanks, Shapira said, “is only as strong as the man inside.”
Recently there have been “refusers” on the right, soldiers who object to evicting settlers should the time come.
This, Shapira said, is a “totally different kind of refusal. The Ten Commandments says, ‘Don’t kill.’ There is no commandment about settlements. But I know evacuation will be very hard for our soldiers. If a soldier wants to sit out the evacuation and wait in the tent, I can live with that.”
If there were no settlements, would there be an end to trouble?
“No, of course not,” Shapira said. “I am not a naive person.”
If Israel is attacked, Shapira said he is ready to fly in combat.
“And yet,” he adds, “there are some people who think I’m a traitor, an enemy of Israel, even though I’m prepared to risk my life again for my country.”