"I refuse to be a party to [the disengagement]," Tzur said. "We will go down in history as courageous Jews, men who stood at the front of the fray and were not willing to take part in this crime."
Tzur and 33 other reserve officers from the Binyamin District Command wrote a letter last week stating that they view the orders to uproot Jews from their homes in the Land of Israel as a "blatantly illegal order with a black flag waving over it, one that is forbidden to fulfill." They asked that the army not give its soldiers such an order, so as to avoid a situation in which soldiers might disobey it en-masse.
After a series of weekend meetings between the 34 and their superior officers in the Binyamin District Command and the Central Region Command, during which the 34 explained their intentions, Central Region Commander Maj.-Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky dismissed each of them. Several of the signing officers said that they should not be dismissed for their opinion about orders that have not been given.
National Union MK Aryeh Eldad responded to the decision by saying, "The dismissal of officers who have not refused an order, but have rather expressed their opinion about the morality of an order that may never even be given, is a stifling of free speech. It will lead people not to talk, but to act."
MK Sha'ul Yahalom (National Religious Party) said that he is against the tone of the officers' letter, but feels that they did not have to be dismissed from the army.
Lt.-Col. Tzur, whose wife and son were murdered in a terror attack just over eight years ago, said, "We discussed it amongst ourselves, and though there were some who thought that we could accept some of the changes that the army demanded in our letter, we decided at the end not to change a thing. We stand with both legs behind the letter, and we'll continue in this path. We won't kneel and we won't bow down."
Tzur admitted that it "could be understood from the letter that we are refusing. It doesn't bother me. I'm perfectly at peace with what I wrote."
Asked whether he and his fellow signatories had taken into account the fact that with their dismissal, the entire rank of command of reserve officers in the Binyamin Region disappears, Tzur said, "Yes, and I don't take this lightly. But the responsibility for this is on the Prime Minister, the Defense Minister, the Chief of Staff, and the Central Regional Commander. They made the decision, and I assume that they took this into account and will find a solution."
Yoel Tzur said that each of the 34 officers had a short private meeting with Gen. Kaplinsky: "In my three-minute meeting, I told him that whoever has a part in this crime of uprooting Jews will be remembered in infamy, and therefore I have nothing to retract in this letter... Furthermore, nobody would ever carry out an order to evacuate [the Israeli-Arab cities] Um el-Fahm or Taibe - but it seems that we're little Jewboys who are still not free of our not-so-distant past..."
Tzur and 33 other reserve officers from the Binyamin District Command wrote a letter last week stating that they view the orders to uproot Jews from their homes in the Land of Israel as a "blatantly illegal order with a black flag waving over it, one that is forbidden to fulfill." They asked that the army not give its soldiers such an order, so as to avoid a situation in which soldiers might disobey it en-masse.
After a series of weekend meetings between the 34 and their superior officers in the Binyamin District Command and the Central Region Command, during which the 34 explained their intentions, Central Region Commander Maj.-Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky dismissed each of them. Several of the signing officers said that they should not be dismissed for their opinion about orders that have not been given.
National Union MK Aryeh Eldad responded to the decision by saying, "The dismissal of officers who have not refused an order, but have rather expressed their opinion about the morality of an order that may never even be given, is a stifling of free speech. It will lead people not to talk, but to act."
MK Sha'ul Yahalom (National Religious Party) said that he is against the tone of the officers' letter, but feels that they did not have to be dismissed from the army.
Lt.-Col. Tzur, whose wife and son were murdered in a terror attack just over eight years ago, said, "We discussed it amongst ourselves, and though there were some who thought that we could accept some of the changes that the army demanded in our letter, we decided at the end not to change a thing. We stand with both legs behind the letter, and we'll continue in this path. We won't kneel and we won't bow down."
Tzur admitted that it "could be understood from the letter that we are refusing. It doesn't bother me. I'm perfectly at peace with what I wrote."
Asked whether he and his fellow signatories had taken into account the fact that with their dismissal, the entire rank of command of reserve officers in the Binyamin Region disappears, Tzur said, "Yes, and I don't take this lightly. But the responsibility for this is on the Prime Minister, the Defense Minister, the Chief of Staff, and the Central Regional Commander. They made the decision, and I assume that they took this into account and will find a solution."
Yoel Tzur said that each of the 34 officers had a short private meeting with Gen. Kaplinsky: "In my three-minute meeting, I told him that whoever has a part in this crime of uprooting Jews will be remembered in infamy, and therefore I have nothing to retract in this letter... Furthermore, nobody would ever carry out an order to evacuate [the Israeli-Arab cities] Um el-Fahm or Taibe - but it seems that we're little Jewboys who are still not free of our not-so-distant past..."