But not in the way the soldiers may have hoped.

Unusually, this small group of reservists has gone beyond justifying their act of refusal in terms of general opposition to the occupation.

Because of their place at the heart of the system of control over Palestinians, they have set out in detail, in the letter and subsequent interviews, what their work entails and why they find it morally repugnant.

Veterans of the secretive Unit 8200, Israel's NSA, say it is drummed into new intelligence recruits that no order is unlawful. They must, for example, guide air strikes even if civilians will be harmed.