AMY GOODMAN: Now, Yonatan Shapira, this is very significant, what the Guardian newspaper was talking about and also quoting you about this: at least two Israeli fighter pilots deliberately missing bombing targets in Lebanon, because they were concerned they were being ordered to bomb civilians.

YONATAN SHAPIRA: Yeah, I know that -- I guess there are several of them. I spoke with one of them, who told me especially of one case that he just got a target -- it was a house on a hill -- and he just didn't want to shoot at the house, and he shot beside the house, and later on, the commanders told him that it’s okay. And my question is, you know, if they can give pilots a target, and later on when the pilot is not shooting the house and telling him that it's okay, you know, what is all this idea behind those missions, if, you know, you can shoot the house, you can not shoot the house? I think there is a problem, you know, spilling behind all these missions that these pilots are getting.

And just so you know, as pilot, I’m not a fighter pilot. I was a helicopter pilot, and I didn't shoot anyone, but I know, just like most of the people can understand, a fighter pilot is flying up in the sky, thousands of feet above the ground. He cannot see people. He cannot see -- he can maybe see some dots, something on the screen inside the cockpit, but he cannot know whether there are civilians or enemies, or, you know, that the truck is bringing missiles or bringing kids. And if now we see that pilots cannot trust the system, I think it's a sign that maybe, maybe in the near future, some of them will speak out, not just quietly and continue to serve, but to speak out to the world to help us to stop this war.

AMY GOODMAN: Yonatan Shapira, you come from an Air Force family, from an Air Force neighborhood in a suburb of Tel Aviv. What is the response? I mean, your father served, your brothers, now one of them in jail.

YONATAN SHAPIRA: You know, it's really, really not easy to be now in Israel against the war. My family, they're near to Tel Aviv. My parents’ house is full with two families that came from the north, one from Haifa and one from a village next to Nahariya, where they were hit by a Katyusha in their garden. And all these people are, you know, given shelter in the center and now waiting for this war to be end.

And I know that also some of them understand that this war is not going to end if we don't do something about that. And although the majority, as you just mentioned, is against us, is against the resistance in Israel, in favor of the war, we must do it also for these people, because they don't have all the information. They don't have the possibility to see the reality as --

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you both for being with us, Dan Tamir, activist with Yesh Gvul; and Yonatan Shapira, one of the co-founders of Combatants for Peace. His brother this week was jailed for refusing to fight in the Lebanon war.

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