Israeli Reservists Challenge Military

TEL AVIV, Israel –– When David Zonshein completed three weeks of army reserve duty at the beginning of the year, he didn't know he was about to launch a movement that would infuriate the military, reinvigorate the country's peace movement and cut him off from much of his own family.

All he knew was that as a decorated officer who was the grandson of Holocaust survivors, he could not serve another day in the Palestinian territories.

"As a Jew, I cannot do the kinds of things that I'm expected to do on reserve duty. Even if the whole world collapses around me, I will never bust into a Palestinian home again and interrogate and humiliate a father in front of his children," Zonshein said in an interview with The Associated Press.

So when the 29-year-old software engineer finished his reserve duty in the Gaza Strip in January, he called his commanders to say he wouldn't be back. Then, he and a friend published an anonymous letter on the internet vowing never to be part of an occupation.

"We were so angry, so traumatized by what we had seen in Gaza that we decided to write the letter and agreed that if we got 10 more officers to join us, then we'd sign our full names."