Seriously injured soldier on overhaul chaos: ‘Better to have died than to see this?’
Ziv Shilon, who lost part of his arm in 2012 Gaza border bombing, calls for country’s leaders to stop nation tearing itself apart: ‘Take responsibility, put your egos aside’
A soldier seriously wounded in 2012 said Friday that sometimes he thinks it would have been better not to have survived the attack, than to see the country tearing itself apart amid the government’s judicial overhaul.
“We see blood on the streets,” Ziv Shilon said in an interview broadcast Friday. “It’s a situation that we didn’t think we would see.”
“Maybe the friends I lost at the age of 18 and 19 saw this country in its optimal state. Maybe those of us who had our limbs ripped off for this country — maybe it would have been better if we hadn’t seen it,” Shilon said, repeating the themes of a social media post he wrote earlier in the week that was widely shared.
Shilon wrote that given the situation, he “wonders whether it was worth getting injured. Would it have been better to die, like my brothers in arms who didn’t see the place they fought for, falling apart?”
Shilon said Friday that his post was prompted by videos of two incidents on Monday in the events surrounding the government passing the first bill in its contentious overhaul package.
In one, an anti-judicial overhaul protester apparently used a flagpole to break the back window of a car as a woman drove with her children near a Jerusalem intersection where protesters had gathered.
In the second, a driver plowed his car straight through a group of protesters near the central town of Kfar Saba, injuring three, “like in one of the worst terror attacks we have seen here,” Shilon said.
“This is what Jews are doing to Jews! Israelis are doing this to Israelis, who live here in the same country we fought for and for which we spilled our blood,” he said.
“Day after day, I wake up and I look at my hands. And the many more who have lost limbs and parts of their soul, they get up and they look at the deep hole they have in their soul and the severe damage, both physical and mental, that they have in their bodies,” Shilon said. “They wake up and they look at this and they ask: ‘Is this what we fought for?'”
Shilon lost his left hand and part of his arm in 2012 when a bomb exploded as he was patrolling near the Gaza border fence. His right arm was seriously damaged in the attack.
Shilon, who reiterated that he is on the right of the political spectrum, was asked what he would say to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“My opinion is addressed to all in the leadership of the State of Israel, to everyone who contributes to this hatred and division and does not stop this demonic train. I am a right-wing person and it has nothing to do with right and left. Seventy percent of this country holds the same views — wanting to live here and protect Israel’s security and promote the Israeli economy.”
“So I am saying to Netanyahu and to [Justice Minister] Yariv Levin, and to whoever is funding the protests, and on the center-left side of the political map, to [National Unity leader] Benny Gantz and to [Opposition Leader] Yair Lapid. And I say to you guys, come to your senses, find leadership, and stop with the cheap politics. There is no place for that at this time,” he said.
“The country is falling apart. Take responsibility, put your egos aside, and deal with this situation,” he said. “We down below are being torn into pieces.”
Shilon was asked to respond to the pilots and other members of the military who have said they will stop volunteering for reserve duties because the judicial overhaul is taking the country on a path away from democracy.
“I will not tell someone who has risked their life for 40 years in the service of the state, what to do,” Shilon said, but noted that he still does reserve duty “even without two hands.”
“I would never make a move like that, but in the same breath I would say that if a person’s conscience is cut in half, there’s probably a very strong reason why they went and did these things, because it’s not something they’ve ever threatened before,” he said, adding that if the situation is resolved, not volunteering for reserve duty should not be a card that is played time and again.
Shilon said that he had spoken to many people who had obtained foreign passports in light of the situation, as well as with tech startups and foreign investors, implying that the overhaul was having an impact on that sector of the economy, as opponents of the overhaul have long warned.
“This demonic dance needs to stop. It’s destroying the country,” he said.
In the years since Shilon’s injuries, he has given lectures and worked as a social activist, as well as leading a Defense Ministry committee to make recommendations for the care of disabled soldiers.
He has undergone over 17 surgeries, as well as intensive rehabilitation, and has run multiple marathons and completed the Iron Man competition, according to his website.
Shilon has in the past worked to try to heal divisions within society. In 2017, he organized a rally to protest against calls to violence directed at the IDF chief of staff and members of the military tribunal who convicted IDF Sgt. Elor Azaria for killing an incapacitated Palestinian attacker in Hebron. Shilon said at the time that it pained him to see Israeli society “ripping itself to shreds.”
