Air Force Commander: Every active officer who signed the protest letter will be dismissed 

Air Force Commander Tomer Bar ruled today (Thursday) that any active reserve duty officer who signed up on the letter that circulated among reservists in the Air Force demanding an end to the war, will end his service immediately.

Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar's move came with the full backing of Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir. The IDF clarifies: "The IDF cannot accept a situation in which active soldiers sign a letter expressing distrust in the IDF." According to the information available in the IAF at this moment, an overwhelming majority of the signatories are not active in the reserves, and at the moment only five have removed their signatures.

In response to the protest letter, MK Almog Cohen said: "The letter of the refuseniks published today is another open invitation to the next massacre. The signatories, including the former chief of staff, continue to trade in the blood of our children with criminal irresponsibility, cynically using their military ranks. I have warned in the past and I warn again: Refusal leads directly to disaster."

Among the leaders of the protest and the signatories of the letter, some of whom the Air Force Commander personally asked to stop this disgrace: Lt. Gen. (res.) Dan Halutz, Maj. Gen. (res.) Nimrod Sheffer, Brig. Gen. (ret.) Assaf Agmon, Maj. Gen. (ret.) Gil Regev, Brig. Gen. (ret.) Relik Shafir, Brig. Gen. (ret.) Amir Haskel, and Col. (ret.) Neri Yarkoni.

Many IDF reservists were outraged by the letter: "Senior officers who failed and served in the IDF years ago – want to threaten the IDF, Israeli society and elected officials, and all this in the name of their military rank, they must stop receiving benefits from the citizens of Israel and from the body they are trying to harm."

The letter included a political call to the government: "We, the reservists and retired aircrew fighters, demand the return of the abductees home without delay, even at the cost of an immediate cessation of hostilities. The war mainly serves political and personal interests, not security interests."