Hundreds of wounded IDF veterans demand an uncompromising endgame — full release of hostages, destruction of Hamas’s military capability, and no return of captured ground — urging the prime minister to reject any partial deal.
In a raw, heartrending public letter delivered on Monday morning, hundreds of wounded Israeli soldiers — members of the Wounded Veterans Forum — made a single, thunderous plea to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: do not accept any plan that ends the fighting before Hamas is decisively defeated.
Sent hours before Netanyahu’s meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, the letter rejects diplomatic shortcuts and partial deals that, the veterans warn, would squander the gains paid for in blood. The writers — men and women who still bear the scars, missing limbs and trauma of front-line combat — insisted the government lacks a mandate to stop now and demanded a concrete, uncompromising postwar agenda: the unconditional release of all hostages, the total destruction of Hamas’s military infrastructure, and guarantees that Gaza will never again become a terror base.
Their language was fierce and personal. “Our wounds cry out, the blood of our friends calls from the ground,” the letter reads. “We were not wounded for surrender.” At a dramatic press event, wounded soldier Ophir Engelsman removed his prosthetic leg and declared he would sacrifice more if it meant the campaign would be finished properly. Fellow veteran Kfir Zar, critically injured in Gaza, warned against returning any territory seized by soldiers’ blood, insisting the IDF must hold the gains that secure Israel for generations.
The appeal frames the war’s end not as a negotiated pause but as a moral and strategic imperative: only an unambiguous military victory — hostage release, elimination of Hamas’s command and combat capabilities, and durable security arrangements for Gaza — will satisfy the price Israel’s soldiers and families have paid. The wounded pledged to keep their voices in the public debate as political leaders weigh any proposal, warning that anything less than total victory would betray those who bled on the battlefield.
