"I held them for 20 minutes -- because I could," he recalled. "Then I let them go because I got bored with the game."
Milstein, an American who moved to Israel and joined the army four years ago, said he discussed the incident with no one -- not with fellow soldiers, nor with his parents back in Santa Fe, N.M. "We tend to keep those experiences within us," he explained, echoing the feelings of almost every soldier interviewed. "It's very personal. We might prefer to forget what happened.
Troops from the 202nd Paratrooper Battalion are briefed before a raid aimed at detaining a suspected Palestinian militant in the West Bank city of Nablus.
(Ilan Mizrahi For The Washington Post)
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"I didn't think about the implications until afterward," said Milstein, whose father is a psychiatrist and mother is a psychologist. "I didn't feel good about what I did -- that I couldn't keep myself from sinking to this."
Last year Milstein decided to tell his story in the newsletter of the Jewish Federation of Greater Albuquerque. Sitting in a Tel Aviv coffee bar with an army buddy on a recent afternoon, he tried to dissect his reasons for taking his personal feelings public.
"There's a mystique about the army -- that we are the most moral army in the world, we only do good things," Milstein said. "But this is what's happening. I think it's important for people to know." He thought it particularly important to tell other Jews because, he said, "they don't really know what's going on."
Today, as a 28-year-old reservist who works for an Israeli Web site, Milstein continues to serve -- reluctantly -- in the Palestinian territories when he receives call-ups.
"There are terrorists stopped and terrorist attacks prevented," he said. "In that respect, there is a very clear purpose and reason for being there. But I don't think we should be there. All the incidents that happen at checkpoints make the Palestinian population hate us more. It counteracts the useful work of tracking suicide bombers. It strengthens the hand of the armed Palestinian groups. It makes it easier for Hamas to justify its attacks on Israelis."
Disobeying Orders
Brig. Gen. Yiftah Spector is one of the most decorated pilots in Israeli history, a triple ace credited with downing 15 enemy planes in wars spanning three decades. In recent years, Spector became a revered flight instructor for the air force. This year alone he spent 47 days on reserve duty and flew 110 times, mostly training cadets and their instructors.
Last month scores of Palestinians were killed or wounded when pilots attempting to kill militant leaders dropped bombs or fired missiles into crowded urban neighborhoods in the Gaza Strip. Spector and 26 other current and former Israeli air force pilots signed a letter stating their opposition to executing "illegal and immoral orders to attack." They refused "to take part in air force strikes in civilian population centers" and "to continue to hurt innocent civilians."
The letter angered many of their commanders, rattled the political establishment and astounded a society that has long considered military pilots to be among the elite. The air force commander, Maj. Gen. Dan Halutz, grounded all the pilots and fired the nine instructors, including Spector, his longtime friend and colleague.
Spector, 63, was undeterred. In an interview a few days after personally surrendering his wings to Halutz, he said: "I am the public. I can speak my heart."
"If we continue, there are going to be greater and great dilemmas and there will be more and more mistakes," said Spector, a sculptor and painter who invented a computerized aircraft flight control system. The government, he said, is "deaf, blind and stupid" for relying exclusively on military force to resolve the conflict.
In addition to the pilots, 567 reserve army officers and soldiers have declared publicly that they will no longer serve in the Palestinian territories, and hundreds of others have quietly asked their commanders for reassignment, according to military lawyers and Israeli military experts.
Many government officials have dismissed the numbers as inconsequential in a military of about 186,000 active-duty and 445,000 reserve troops. Some military analysts disagree.
