Israeli soldier who refuses to serve in Gaza speaks out

JERUSALEM -- Yuval Green, a 26-year-old reservist who was called up to fight in southern Gaza, said he decided to leave the Israel Defense Forces when his unit was asked to set fire to a Palestinian house there.

"They gave us an order to burn down a house, and I went to my commander and asked him, 'Why are we doing that?'" Green told ABC News last week. "And the answers he gave me were just not satisfying enough, were not even close to being satisfying enough. And I said, 'I'm not willing to participate in that. If we're doing that, I'm leaving.'"

The IDF told ABC News that its "actions are based on military necessity and in accordance to international law" and there was "no IDF doctrine that aims at causing maximal damage to civilian infrastructure regardless of military necessity."

Exceptional incidents were investigated by an independent body, the IDF said.

Very few IDF soldiers who have fought in Gaza since the start of Israel’s war with Hamas after the militant group launched a surprise terror attack on Oct. 7 have spoken out against the war. Those who have spoken out have done so anonymously for the most part. Green, however, decided to do so publicly.

In June, Green cosigned a letter with 40 other reservists, who remained anonymous, refusing to serve in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. He accepts his views on the war are not shared by many of his friends and fellow soldiers and that Israeli support for enlisting and fighting against Hamas remains high.

But his experience in Gaza moved him to speak publicly, he said, on behalf of both Israelis and Palestinians.

Green said he saw soldiers deface and burn Palestinian homes and mistreat the possessions of those left behind. Israel says Hamas embeds itself into civilian infrastructure and booby-traps homes in the region.

"In certain cases, entire neighborhoods in the Gaza Strip are converted into combat complexes which are utilized for ambushes, housing command and control centers and weapon warehouses, combat tunnels, observation posts, firing positions, booby-trapped houses, and for setting explosives in the streets," the IDF said.

The IDF statement in response to Green's allegations also said: "Defacing homes with graffiti and stealing household personal objects is against the IDF’s code of conduct and values. The IDF has acted, and continues to act, to identify unusual cases that deviate from what is expected of IDF soldiers. Those cases will be arbitrated, and significant command measures will be taken against the soldiers involved."

Green served as a combat medic in Khan Younis, Gaza, last November and December. He said IDF soldiers were engaged in guerrilla fighting, going house to house in Gaza. But interactions with Palestinians were rare.

He said soldiers had been ordered to stop destroying houses in "some cases," but it weighed on his conscience.

"You have to really think through about the amount of damage you're inflicting upon the poor person that will lose everything he has," Green said.

Before the war, Green had already been planning on leaving the IDF, saying he disagreed with Israel’s policies in the West Bank before Oct 7.

He, however, accepted the call as a reservist when Israel was attacked. He said he believed some of the soldiers’ actions in Gaza were driven by the response to the massacres committed by Hamas and other Palestinian-armed groups on Oct. 7, which killed an estimated 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials.

More than 250 people were kidnapped, but 116 remain inside Gaza held by Hamas and other armed groups, according to the prime minister’s office. Forty have been declared dead. Only seven have been rescued by IDF military operations, while others were released during a temporary cease-fire in November.

More than 39,000 people have been killed in Gaza since last November, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.

"I think what happened on Oct. 7… war has created a lot of anger amongst us. And I think the horrible things that have happened have caused many Israelis to be very, very furious with the Palestinians," Green said. “I wouldn't say it's bad apples. We’re going inside Palestinian houses, we're using it for military purposes which if you're thinking the whole war is legitimate, I guess it is legitimate … but you're taking souvenirs, you're doing graffiti, you're just destroying things for no reason."

The rules of engagement could sometimes be left to individual commanders, he said.

"You have to understand that, first of all, the military is a big system," he said. "And sometimes, if there are rules, different commanders could interpret them in different ways so things could change, depending on the person that is there. Basically we have had someone who wanted to, for instance, create more destruction in a house. And he wasn't allowed because there was no reason for that. But on the other hand, we pretty much were able to do whatever we wanted inside the houses."

The scale of destruction he saw in Gaza, he said, was unimaginable.

"All the buildings are destroyed or at least damaged. All the roads are damaged. Everything is ruined. I can't imagine how people would go back to living there," Green said.

Asked why he was choosing to speak out publicly, he said he was trying to advocate for a cease-fire deal to end the suffering of Palestinians and save the remaining hostages in Gaza.

"There is a concrete way to finish the war and finish the violence," he said. "So I'm trying to push that."