Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

Yonatan Shapira is an ex-captain and pilot in the Israeli Air Force. In 2003, he helped coordinate the circulation of a letter that was signed by 27 Israeli Air Force pilots expressing their refusal to engage in Israeli military actions targeting Palestinians. Additionally, Shapira has endorsed the domestic Israeli movement supporting Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS), which is commonly referred to as Boycott from Within.

This interview with former Captain Shapira comes in the aftermath of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issuing its strongest directive yet in the Israel-Hamas War on Thursday, instructing Israel to take tangible measures to guarantee the delivery of humanitarian assistance to Gaza to curb the onset of famine amidst the countrys assault on Gaza in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks. These measures include collaborating with the UN and expanding the number of aid crossing points. This ruling stems from a case initiated by South Africa which accused Israel of genocidean accusation that Israel has vehemently refuted. In a previous ruling in January, the court instructed Israel to facilitate increased aid to access to Gaza. However, according to the courts recent statement, the living conditions of Palestinians in Gaza have worsened significantly since then, prompting this latest, forceful directive.

Yonatan Shapira spoke with JURISTs Deputy Managing Editor for Interviews, Pitasanna Shanmugathas, about his life growing up in Israel, his activities as a soldier in the Israeli Air Force, his disillusionment with Israels policies, his activities as a dissident within and outside Israel, and his thoughts on the mindset of Israeli soldiers and society since the October 7 attacks.

Shanmugathas: Mr. Yonatan Shapira, you were born and raised in Israel, can you talk about what life was like in Israel for you growing up?

Yonatan Shapira: I was born in a very Zionist family, I grew up in a military base for the first years of my life, as my father was a squadron commander in the Air Force. Then we moved to the suburbs of Tel Aviv, where I grew up in a neighborhood with lots of military career people. Very much kind of equal to the Israeli Labor Party; socialism, or at least pretending of socialist values, with a very nationalistic attitude to everything that has to do with the State of Israel, but with a self-image of a peaceful, loving society.

Shanmugathas: When you were growing up, was there ever any discussion among regular Israelisthe adults, the childrenabout the Palestinians as a people?

Shapira: Israel is a country surrounded by Arabs; Palestine, or the term Palestinians was not used. So, everyone used the term Arab Israelis. The only thing resembling Palestine or Palestinians was Palestina, which was the name that the place was called during the British Mandate before 1948. So, there wasnt much discussion at all. The historical narrative completely neglected the Nakba of 1948, the destroyed villages, and the exiled refugees. It was almost poetic, in a way, how we were raised to think about peace, love, and all these beautiful values of equality and striving for peace between nations, while completely ignoring the horrific reality. So, I didnt know anything about the Nakba, the refugees, the Judaization of the land, or the expulsion of the Palestinian population, all these issues. It was like living in a Zionist dream, where we always extended our hand for peace, but the Arabs were portrayed as missing every opportunity for peace. There was peace with Egypt when I was around six or seven years old, and I thought that was great and felt super happy about it, but it was from a very ignorant point of view.

Shanmugathas: When you were going to school in Israel as a youth, how was the founding of the State of Israel taught to students in history class?

Shapira: The same way it is taught now. Of course, a lot about the Holocaust and the problem of Jews around the world, with Israel presented as the solution. The ongoing wars that Israel is pushed or forced to fight because the countries around Israel do not accept its presence, nothing about what really happened before and after 1948. What I have to emphasize is that because of the section of society I came from, which was kind of the Labor society left movement, I participated in youth movements and activities that were all about peace and promoting beautiful values. For example, from a very young age, I was against the occupation in Gaza and the West Bank settlements, and I was even opposed to the war in Lebanon and Israels presence there. So, I held these kinds of Zionist left-leaning opinions, like my mother and many other people around me, but I didnt entirely understand the real situation on the ground. Additionally, this didnt change my desire to enlist in the military and become the best soldier in the world.

Shanmugathas: Your father flew fighter jets in the October War of 1973, the Yom Kippur War.

Shapira: He was a Squadron Commander in 73, and I was just a year and a half old.

Shanmugathas: So, I assume you grew up hearing a lot of war stories? How did your father feel about what Israel did during the Yom Kippur War and his military service?

Shapira: I grew up looking at the photo albums from the wars; there was a cabinet in the living room with all these Air Force war albums. I remember myself as a child, looking at all the tough-looking pilots in the pictures and knowing that it was very dangerous. Since we have a very strong military, Israel managed to fight back and keep us safe. No one told me about [Israeli Prime Minister] Golda Meirs refusal to negotiate with all the Arab countries or all the tricks and stuff with [US Secretary of State] [Henry] Kissinger in the US; it was not part of my upbringing at all. I had to learn all these things, way, way later, when I started realizing that there were lots of lies, more lies than truth, during my upbringing.

Shanmugathas: Your father wasnt aware of the background deception that was going on with Golda Meir and Kissinger? He thought what he did during the Yom Kippur War was a good thing?

Shapira: Of course! He was upset with Golda Meir that they didnt strike earlier. [He] was not upset about her refusal to negotiate with Egypt and with other Arab countries after 67, but [he] was [upset] about her not allowing the Air Force to do a pre-emptive strike.

Shanmugathas: I would think that your parents generation, they would know, to some extent, about Israels dispossession of the Palestinians.

Shapira: I think it was the framework, the way they framed ityou can get it on every official website, from the Ministry of Education to, like, every kind of Israeli propaganda. The narrative goes like this: the UN proposed a partition plan that the Arab countries and Palestinians refused, leading to their attack on us. We won the war, so if you attack us, thats what happens. That was the summary of the narrative. Of course, [my parents] didnt. Maybe they knew something, but perhaps it was pushed to the back of their minds about the fact that, even in the fields near where I grew up next to Tel Aviv, there were remains of a demolished Palestinian village. Later on, when I became an activist, along with my brothers, and especially in the last 20 years after I became an activist, my mother started remembering different things from her childhood and later on. These memories started to add up and paint a full picture for her, remembering her childhood in Tel Aviv, walking next to this abandoned Muslim Palestinian graveyard next to where she was walking to school, asking questions like Where are the people? Whats happening? However, these memories were only brought up retroactively after she was already in her late 60s or so, starting to learn about the Nakba by attending various activities with me and other activist organizations in Israel that teach Israelis about the Nakba and destroyed villages. Through these activities, she could revisit her memories as a child. But as I was growing up, nothing was mentioned or passed to me.

Shanmugathas: Talk about when you joined the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), what position you had in the IDF, and your reason for joining?

Shapira: I was a critically thinking boy in some ways but very Zionist. So, for me, joining the military meant following in my fathers footsteps to become a pilot. I was drawn to flying because I liked everything related to the air; I used to build model airplanes, and I was the kind of child who enjoyed watching birds and airplanes. This interest aligned perfectly with my Zionist belief that I need to be a good soldier in the military to protect my country. Even as a teenager, when I started learning about the problems, my solution was to be part of the system and work from within to fix them. Additionally, as a child and teenager, I was also against the right-wing Likud party figures like Begin and Ariel Sharon, and I held strong left-leaning, peace-loving beliefs. However, I didnt see any contradiction in joining the military; it was completely compatible with my beliefs.

Shanmugathas: Could you talk about what the culture was like in the Israeli military? What was your military training like during the time you were in the Israeli Air Force?

Shapira: You dont have much time for yourself; youre doing physical training, a lot of tests, theory, exams, and flying requirements. Every day is a test, and they can kick you out if you dont excel in meeting the requirements. So, there is a feeling that you really want to finish this course, knowing that 90 percent of the people who start dont finish. You want to be the one who completes it. Consequently, you dont have much time to think about other things.

I have to say that for me, there was an episode when they had us experiencing a couple of weeks of being ground soldiers in the West Bank and Gaza. It was around 1992, I think, so it was relatively quiet during the pre-Oslo peace accord, close to the peace treaty with Jordan. Despite the relative calm, I was quite shocked to see the military actions on the ground and observe how my commanders were behaving. Nevertheless, it made me feel that I would be different, that I would be a good soldier.

Shanmugathas: What kind of things did you see your commanders doing that shocked you?

Shapira: It was all very low-scale, compared to the genocide now; it feels so nave looking back. I remember I was supposed to be sitting on the roof of a house in Gaza, just observing. I think they wanted us to experience what it was like to be ground soldiers. I recall crossing the street and locking eyes with a young girl, probably returning from school. She looked afraid of me, and as I crossed to reach the observation roof, I could sense her fear. I spoke to her in the little Arabic I knew, saying, Dont be afraid. Only later did I realize how ridiculous I must have sounded; she saw my big gun that I was holding, my helmet, and the uniform. I also witnessed my commanders sometimes throwing stun grenades at people without good reason, among other little things like that.

Shanmugathas: Were you ever taught during your military training about the importance of taking precautions in protecting civilians during air missions or during ground missions?

Shapira: Well, my training was as a rescue helicopter pilot, so I was never in combat. I never received training as a fighter pilot. All my training revolved around rescuing people, flying injured people to hospitals, flying commanders and troops. However, the official narrative emphasized that the Israeli military only engages with the enemy and not civilians. We focused on what they called the principle of purity of arms, which is part of the ethical code of the Israeli military. According to this principle, the IDF only fights against the enemy and not civilians. It was discussed, but even then, there was a huge gap between this narrative and reality. Nevertheless, this mindset persisted for me until the year when I decided to change, realizing that I was someone else and that I am a member of a terrorist organization.

Shanmugathas: As an occupation army I would think it is easy to carry out your work if you are able to dehumanize the people you are occupying. So, if you are able to think of Palestinians as rats, or as vermin.

Shapira: I think nowadays, thats definitely what they do, and probably when I was a soldier, they also did it, but in the more exclusive part of the military where I was in service, these things were not very present. So, I dont recall moments when it was like that. It was in the overall narrative, you know, teaching you how the enemies always hide behind civilians, how you can never trust; it was more subtle and camouflaged in a way that dehumanized the Palestinians, the Arabs, etc.which was a helpful thing in the process of training me to believe in the system, because I really went on for years believing in the system. When I finally realized that its a lieeverything is like lies after lies, after liesthen I can go back and revisit different moments and different things I heard, different statements and different stories, and realize how its all part of the big brainwash system, which exists in, I guess, in many military organizations, but that was my experience.

One of the things that actually helped me open my eyes was, you know, sometimes when youre being taken out of your society and put somewhere else, its easy to see the fault of peoples actions and behavior, when youre not a member of the group, when youre looking at it as an outsider. For me, that happened in 2001, just after 9/11. I was sent to do special training in the US military to learn how to fly a Blackhawk helicopter. So, I was there for four and a half months, or something like that, in the US Army base in Alabama. It was the weeks or months before the invasion of Afghanistan.

Right after 9/11, in preparation for the invasion, [I witnessed] the preparation of the mind of the American population and the soldiers, of course. For me, it was a shocking lesson about how propaganda works, and I remember being exposed to this level of militarism and brainwashing of the soldiers in that army base. When I came back home and returned to my military base and Israeli society, I started seeing the things that I couldnt see before or maybe I saw a little bit, but suddenly, they became very, very clear that actually, I am also subjected to this kind of brainwashing. Im also subjected to this kind of inherent militarism, of this kind of ongoing propaganda. Of course, [my disillusionment] was combined with the Second Intifada, and eventually what was the most impactful on me was the Israeli Air Forces [practice of] targeted killing, or they had the different Orwellian names. They called it targeted elimination, which is basically shooting missiles and dropping bombs on civilian populations in Gaza and the West Bankalthough I was not participating directly in it because I was flying rescue helicopters. Something started getting close to home in a way when in a very specific bombardment in July 2002, the Israeli Air Force dropped a one-ton bomb on the house of the leader of the Hamas armed faction in the middle of the night, and they killed him, of course, and I think a total of 15 people. Most of them were children, and there was huge damage to all the surroundings, maybe 150 wounded and severely wounded. You know, I gave lots of interviews about my process of transformation.

When someone changes their perspective on life, its never just one thing; its a long chain of events and moments and encounters, but that specific one is one of these strong moments where I used to say that the nave Zionist boy that I used to be also died in that bombardment because in a way, or with all the lies and with all the brainwashing and with all the deception I was subjected to, that was the moment that I realized that I am part of an organization that is killing innocents intentionally. Its the moment that the ground underneath your feet is shaken, you have no solid thing to step on. You start to find, like, you know, someone that is floating in the sea after the ship was wrecked, and you look for a piece of wood to hold onto or something that will take you to the shore of understanding of whats going on and where you live and whats right and whats wrong and who are your friends and who are your enemies and who of your friends are actually your enemy and who in the enemies are actually your friends and all these questions of identity and belonging. It was a very intense emotional time. Combined with many other encounters and stories, things that happened to me, I came to the decision that I dont just need to leave the system and go somewhere else or do something else and find a solution for myself, but I want to do something just like they taught me all my life that we need to think about the benefit of the greater good of the population, the people, the country, humanity. So, I basically acted upon all the values that they taught me, but it happened to be against the system that I was serving. So, in a way, I felt that I was implementing all those beautiful values that they taught us in school about peace, equality, dedication, sacrifice and everything. But this time, it was against the system that I was serving, and, in a way, at that time, I didnt feel that I was doing it against; I felt that I was doing it in order to save Israel from itself or to save my own people from going into a self-destruction wall or hitting the abyss, and thats when I decided to organize this group of pilots and write a letter and find people that were willing to join me.

Read more:
From 'Zionist Dream' to Dissent: An Interview with a Former IDF Captain on Israeli Military Culture, Personal ... - JURIST

Category: Zionism
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