Some Israeli reservists say they’d rather go to jail than serve in the assault on Gaza City

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 shot by an NBC News team 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.