Yesh Atid MK Moshe “Kinley” Tur-Paz was a typical opposition lawmaker for most of 2023. A backbencher who does not favor stunts and shouting matches, he perhaps stood out most for his kippah and residence in Kfar Etzion, a West Bank settlement, despite representing a party that, by reputation and voting statistics, generally represents secular residents of central Israel.

Yet, like so many other Israelis, Tur-Paz took on new responsibilities in the wake of the Oct. 7 terror attacks and ensuing war with Hamas, becoming, as the title of his book suggests, An MK on the Night Shift. During the day, Tur-Paz was chief of operations for the IDF’s Gaza Division. His book, released in September, is subtitled “A War Diary,” and tells the story of the 85 days he spent on IDF reserve duty in Gaza. 

Though Tur-Paz was born in the U.S., MK on the Night Shift is only available in Hebrew.

Tur-Paz, 52, was born in Philadelphia, where his parents, British immigrants to Israel, were serving as Jewish Agency emissaries. He spent years of his childhood in the U.K., where his parents served once again as emissaries. His uncle was Yehuda Avner, the renowned diplomat and advisor to four Israeli prime ministers.

Tur-Paz has a resume made up of elite liberal-leaning Religious Zionist educational institutions: He studied at a high school established by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, and then Har Etzion Yeshiva, known informally as the “Gush.” He led Ne’emanei Torah Va’Avodah, a leading liberal Religious Zionist organization, was principal of the religious feminist high school Pelech in Jerusalem and was CEO of the Religious Kibbutz Movement’s chain of schools before entering electoral politics.

Throughout that time, he made his way up the IDF ranks as a reservist, going from a battalion commander in the Paratroopers Brigade to a lieutenant colonel, and chief of operations for the IDF’s Gaza Division during 2014’s Operation Protective Edge. His reserve duty, and that of other lawmakers, ended in July 2022 when the military no longer allowed Knesset members from serving in its ranks.

On the morning of Oct. 7, 2023, Tur-Paz was home with his children in Kfar Etzion, a religious kibbutz and settlement south of Jerusalem, when he received an emergency notice from the town’s security officer for residents keep their phones on and that anyone with a weapon should take it to synagogue. He attended that day’s Simchat Torah services, which were disrupted by a rocket siren, sending his family and their neighbors into bomb shelters. 

That evening, Tur-Paz’s son, a career IDF officer, called him and said he thought the army needed someone with his experience in Gaza.

“I was voting in the plenum and a member of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee dealing with national security, and at the same time doing 14-hour shifts managing all the operations in Gaza, deciding where to bomb, where not to bomb, when to do a rescue operation,” Tur-Paz said.

Tur-Paz and two other lawmakers who led the Knesset Caucus for Reservists, Moshe Solomon (Religious Zionist Party) and Yitzhak Kroizer (Otzma Yehudit), wrote to the IDF’s head of human resources.

“We said we want to go back to reserves; the army needs us,” Tur-Paz recalled. “At 5 a.m. we received permission, and by 10 a.m. I was already on the base outside Gaza.”

“There were roadblocks and obstacles on the way. We reached a makeshift checkpoint with a civilian jeep blocking the road – 66-year-old [retired Maj.-Gen.] Yisrael Ziv and his son had decided on their own to put up a roadblock to keep civilians from entering the combat zone,” he said. “Yisrael had been my officer, who sent me to the officers’ course 30 years ago, so he let us through.”

For the next 85 days, Tur-Paz had two jobs, as Knesset member and as one of the chiefs of operations for Gaza. 

“I was voting in the plenum and a member of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee dealing with national security, and at the same time doing 14-hour shifts managing all the operations in Gaza, deciding where to bomb, where not to bomb, when to do a rescue operation,” he said.

At the end of the first week, Tur-Paz’s wife, Shlomit Ravitsky Tur-Paz, head of the Religion and State Program at the Israel Democracy Institute, gave him two pieces of advice.

“We are the army of the people, and the elected representatives of the people are serving,” Tur-Paz said. “I can present what is happening in the field to the Knesset in the most authentic way, and ensure that we are not disconnected.”

“She told me I should divide my time — 90% in the army and 10% in the Knesset — because my job at that time was to be in the military, and I had a critical job,” Tur-Paz said. “And she said that I should write, because writing is a kind of therapy for me. It later became an obsession of mine, to document and save and ensure that things are remembered … After three months, the head of human resources in the IDF had enough of us MKs in the army … and I had a 180-page diary that became a book. I described what I saw chronologically and wrote about what I learned.”

Tur-Paz recounted that in one of the first weeks of the war, the head of the French Senate’s Foreign Affairs, Defense and Armed Forces Committee visited Israel and expressed shock that he was serving as a senior officer in the army and a Knesset member at the same time.

“I told him, it’s unusual, but it has its advantages,” he said. “We are the army of the people, and the elected representatives of the people are serving. I can present what is happening in the field to the Knesset in the most authentic way, and ensure that we are not disconnected.”

“I would come to the Knesset in uniform, together with one of my aides who was serving with me,” Tur-Paz said. “We would both arrive with our guns, check them with security at the entrance, and change clothes so I could give a speech – except for the one time, which became the cover of the book, in which I gave a speech about reservists, so I stayed in uniform. I was exhausted … and there was a mental transition where you are totally focused on the military and have to shift to civilian activity.” 

Tur-Paz learned in the field that the number of soldiers and officers available at a given time was much smaller than it had been a decade earlier, something that he said he was unlikely to have learned as a member of Knesset who was not doing reserve duty.

“The soldiers had never been told to be prepared at dawn,” Tur-Paz said. “It wasn’t happening. The [Gaza] division didn’t have backup, which is a very basic matter in a war.” 

Though Tur-Paz saw advantages in being in the Knesset and the military at the same time, he called the experience “weird, awkward [and] complex.” 

“I would come to the Knesset in uniform, together with one of my aides who was serving with me,” he said. “We would both arrive with our guns, check them with security at the entrance, and change clothes so I could give a speech – except for the one time, which became the cover of the book, in which I gave a speech about reservists, so I stayed in uniform. I was exhausted … and there was a mental transition where you are totally focused on the military and have to shift to civilian activity.” 

He also noted that in reserve duty, “everybody is together, but [in the Knesset] you feel the divisions. It’s not easy.”

Early in his book, Tur-Paz mentions that the Gaza Division had trained for situations similar to Oct. 7 for years. Asked how, in that case, the army could have been so unprepared when it really happened, he called the events that unfolded last October “a perfect storm.”

“Israel underestimated Hamas,” he began, listing the problems that preceded the attack. “IDF discipline was looser, they were sending half of the soldiers home for the weekend instead of ensuring that most stayed on base. There were not enough soldiers available at all times. They were not prepared at dawn, which is the time when attacks always happen. Weapons were taken away from the kibbutzes’ [security teams]. The [border] fence gave us an illusion of safety, but it wasn’t built to stop an attack by thousands of terrorists. And in the end, Israel was surprised.”

Tur-Paz said that few senior officials are accepting responsibility for the failures that led to the attacks, noting that “success has many fathers and failure is an orphan.”. For his part, he acknowledged, “I didn’t ask enough tough questions in my jobs in the IDF and the Knesset. I didn’t know to demand answers from the Defense Ministry and prime minister, to make sure they were doing their job. And that is part of my job as an elected official.”

He also pointed to the casual Israeli mentality as part of the problem: “One of the significant lessons I learned is that, while we saw Israel’s great spirit, of people leaving their homes and risking their lives, we did not learn to be more professional. There is a lot of mediocrity. As [former Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin said, we have a culture of, ‘It’ll be OK.’ Israelis are great at improvising, but we are bad at planning, being organized and following the rules. I think we saw that explode on Oct. 7.” 

One of the other major lessons Tur-Paz said that he learned was about coexistence with Israeli Arabs.

“On the third week of the war, I was given a room to sleep in on a kibbutz,” he recalled. “I saw a Bedouin woman in traditional dress cleaning the room. It was her first day at work. I was hesitant when I saw her, because there were rumors that Gazans working in Israel had given intelligence to Hamas.”

“The woman said to me, ‘I see your reaction, but we are with you.’ She told me her uncle was murdered on Oct. 7 and her cousin was kidnapped. Hamas terrorists treated Muslims and Arabs worse than Jews. She said, ‘We are with you now.’ It was very meaningful for me to hear in person,” Tur-Paz said.

“There are people who don’t serve and are not partners,” Tur-Paz said. “I think it is a real problem, that there are people here who are not part of the effort at all. I know 20 people who were killed or their children were – I was their principal, or they’re the children of close friends. This has touched most Israelis in their closest social circles; 1,200 people killed in a small country like Israel is like half a million people in America.”

This war, he said, underscored to the degree to which that Israeli Arabs also see Hezbollah and Hamas as a threat and are also targets of those terrorist groups, creating “an Israeli brotherhood, a Jewish-Arab partnership.” 

Tur-Paz also wrote about the Haredim and their general avoidance of enlisting in the IDF, what he called “the Israeli status quo that no one agreed to.” He argued that this is the top political issue in Israel and will remain that way in the coming years.

“There are people who don’t serve and are not partners,” Tur-Paz said. “I think it is a real problem, that there are people here who are not part of the effort at all. I know 20 people who were killed or their children were – I was their principal, or they’re the children of close friends. This has touched most Israelis in their closest social circles; 1,200 people killed in a small country like Israel is like half a million people in America.”

“There is no way you don’t know someone killed – unless you’re Haredi or Arab,” he added. “Most Haredim don’t have friends or family in this war, which is very unusual. Many Israelis are not sleeping well at night … Even when I am not serving, there is always one of my children or a nephew [who is serving].”

Israel does not have a special law exempting Haredim from IDF conscription, following previous moves by the Supreme Court to strike down past arrangements. The IDF has sent out about 1,000 draft notices to young Haredi men, but Defense Minister Israel Katz has held off on continuing to conscript the thousands of others, and is floating legislation that would very gradually increase their numbers. The governing coalition, which includes the Haredi Shas and UTJ parties, has also sought to pass laws exempting Haredim from financial penalties for not enlisting.

Tur-Paz suggested that the government not pass a special law at this point, and simply send out draft notices to the roughly 90,000 Haredi men ages 18-27.

“We need the most severe social and economic penalties. They need to pay a price,” he said. “They should not be able to get a driver’s license or leave the country, like any Israeli [who dodges the draft] and not receive added benefits. Haredim should not have special privileges anymore. I think that will be very effective and most will enlist if that happens.”

Tur-Paz called it “crazy” that Haredim receive four times as many housing benefits as the general population, and that they are going to receive discounted daycare for their children – as a result of the cancelation of one of the penalties for not serving in the IDF – while the cost is set to go up in 2025 for other Israelis. 

“Unfortunately,” he added, “the current coalition is being held hostage by the Haredim … There’s a contradiction here in that religious [ZIonist] parties’ population is sending more than its proportion [to serve in the IDF], there are three to four times as many of them among fallen soldiers than the general population.” 

“Maybe the current government will be reelected, but how can you run a country without taking responsibility?” Tur-Paz said.

Asked if the sparring over Haredi enlistment means the Knesset has returned to “Oct. 6” politics, as the Israelis have come to call people who display prewar behavior, Tur-Paz said, “It’s not balanced between the sides,” putting the blame solely on the current government.

When it comes to the government’s far-reaching judicial reform and its opponents holding repeated mass protests that paralyzed the country, Tur-Paz accused the government of “not taking responsibility for the failures or divisions that led to Oct. 7. [Former Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah and others thought they could attack us because they saw us weaker than ever, and that is because of the government’s judicial and social policies.” 

Tur-Paz called for the government to resign and call an election: “Maybe the current government will be reelected, but how can you run a country without taking responsibility?”

Tur-Paz is also the Israeli chairman of the Israel-Ireland Parliamentary Friendship Group at a time when Dublin has adopted an anti-Israel stance. Israel’s Foreign Ministry announced last month plans to close its embassy in Ireland.

“They’re not an enemy,” he said of Ireland. “We have a serious dispute with them about their discriminatory approach to Israel, which includes difficult statements bordering on antisemitism, but it is a dispute with people in the same democratic, Western, liberal world.”

Tur-Paz called Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar’s decision to shutter the embassy a mistake: “Closing the embassy is like cutting off relations. We need them. They host important international corporations and have a Jewish community. You can recall the ambassador, instead. This is not a smart or good way to conduct diplomacy.” 

“At the same time, I call on Ireland to change its approach,” he added. “The dominant voice in Ireland is anti-Israel. They are not just against Israel’s actions. It’s hard to talk to them, but I think we need to, because the disconnect is bad for Israel.”