-Caveat Lector-
The Jewish Concience is not silenced.
flw
VILLAGE VOICE
Week of August 22 - 28, 2001
-"We don't cry, we don't shoot! To be murderers, we refuse!"
Draft Resistance Grows in Israel
Refuseniks
by Alisa Solomon
JERUSALEM-"We don't cry, we don't shoot! To be murderers, we refuse!" Down the block
from Orient House-the hub
of Palestinian cultural and political activities in East Jerusalem until it was seized
by Israel on August
10-Shai, 24, bangs a drum and chants. He is one of Israel's own Seattle generation of
protesters.
Demonstrating on August 14, along with some 300 longtime Israeli peaceniks and
Palestinians
from the Arab side of the city, Shai and his cadre demand the return of the building
to its rightful owners,
the sharing of Jerusalem, the end of the occupation. And for Shai, there is another
message: draft resistance.
His head nearly shaved, his chin dotted with soft whiskers, Shai beats out an
increasingly urgent rhythm. The
anti-military chant is especially meaningful to him, he explains later, because he
refuses to honor his
obligation to serve in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). Like nearly a quarter of the
tens of thousands of
Israelis conscripted each year, he has found a way to dodge the draft. Shai likes the
way the slogan invokes
the controversial and contemptuous old saying about Israel's idea of itself as having
an army of sensitive
soldiers, who shoot first and then cry later because they'd really rather not be
forced to do such terrible
things. They don't need to fire in the first place, he says. The massing of tanks
outside West Bank cities
over the last few days, the ongoing assassinations of suspected militants, the
demolition of homes and wells,
the three decades of daily, degrading control of Palestinian lives: All of it
confounds and disgusts him.
Especially because, he maintains, it's gratuitous, weakening Israeli security more
than strengthening it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Between September and March-the first six months of the current intifada-the number of
reservists filing
requests to defer their tour of duty doubled.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
These are fringe views to be sure, in a country that, despite its firepower, regards
itself as besieged-and
even more so in Shai's hometown, Bet Horon, a West Bank settlement. In the first
opinion polls since the
suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Haifa, reported in this week's Israeli press, 34
percent of Israelis
applauded the current level of IDF force against Palestinians-and 42 percent called
for more. Still, when it
comes to putting one's own body on the line in pursuit of such policies-even at a time
when fear has emptied
intercity buses and given wispy young waitresses the added duty of searching
customers' bags at caf�
entrances-the consensus may be showing some cracks.
According to the IDF, 22 percent of all Israeli males eligible for the draft (at age
18, into three years of
basic service) are granted exemptions-an increase from 12 percent 20 years ago.
Research collected by Israel's
anti-militarist, feminist organization, New Profile, puts that number even a few
points higher, and also shows
that of those who do enlist, about a third find reason for early discharge. Meanwhile,
the reserves, in which
men must serve for about a month each year until their mid forties (the specific age
depends on the type of
unit they're in), are experiencing even greater attrition. The IDF reports that only
one-third of all men
eligible for reserve duty actually fulfill it. And 41 percent of that minority
believe, according to a recent
Israeli poll, that they are suckers for doing so. Between September and March-the
first six months of the
current intifada-the number of reservists filing requests to defer their tour of duty
doubled.
The IDF insists that these statistics do not represent a crisis in the readiness and
solidity of Israel's
famous "people's army" (though it did make preparations at the end of July to call up
tens of thousands of
reservists who are living abroad). And to be sure, most draft dodgers make no
ideological declarations against
the occupation and its tactics, but may simply want to get on with their lives. Still,
some antioccupation
activists see a tacit rejection of Israeli policy in the high numbers shirking their
duty. "These are what we
call 'gray refuseniks,' explains Idan Landau, 34, a reservist who completed a two-week
prison sentence at the
end of July after explicitly refusing orders to serve in the West Bank as a matter of
conscience. "They
fabricate some kind of medical or psychological condition to get out. It would be
better, though, if they said
why they refused to sacrifice their lives to play a part in the repression."
Since this intifada started, some 200 soldiers like Landau have, indeed, said exactly
why-and some have gone
to jail as a result. (Israeli law does not recognize conscientious objection for men,
though it does allow it
for women.) In a recent open letter from military prison, another defiant reservist,
David Haham-Herson,
writes, "I am a soldier in the Israeli army, imprisoned for refusing to take part in
repression, arising from
a sense that it is out of the question to be a Jew, the son of a people of refugees,
and yet repress a people
of refugees." He continues, "I am concerned because I know that the [Palestinians']
terrible hatred toward me
is justified. This hatred has led to horrifying and perverted manifestations, like the
young suicide bombers,
but we create the conditions that lead to this monstrosity."
Landau's own official statement asserts: "The Palestinian population is being
subjected to starvation, denial
of medical treatment, demolition of homes, and economic strangulation. I will take no
part in these war
crimes, nor will I serve as a fig leaf for them." Landau explains that he is not a
pacifist. A captain (and
also a lecturer in linguistics at Ben Gurion University), he is willing to serve in
legitimate defense of
Israel. But that's not what the military is doing in the West Bank and Gaza, he says:
"The myth is that our
pressure in the territories will protect our country. On the contrary. It is the
trigger to more violence."
The concept of selective refusal is unusual, allowing soldiers to draw their own lines
on the basis of their
own moral reasoning, says Peretz Kidron, a longtime activist with Yesh Gvul ("There's
a Limit"). The group
began supporting refuseniks with the start of the Lebanon war of 1982, then sprang
back into full action
during the first intifada in the late 1980s; since last fall, its phone has been
ringing constantly. Compared
to the '80s and '90s, says Kidron, the army is now being much less aggressive in
prosecuting refuseniks.
Nearly all of them served some jail time during the first intifada, he says, but these
days fewer than 10
percent are being put on trial. The army is following a policy of
non-confrontation-"clearly orders from
above" aimed at avoiding headlines, Kidron says. Indeed, when there have been trials
and jail time, there has
been press. At the beginning of August, one of Israel's major daily papers, Ha'Aretz,
ran a 3000-word profile
of a reservist, Yishai Rosen-Zvi, who did 13 days in detention for insisting he would
not go to the
territories "to maintain the occupation."
In 20 years, according to Kidron, the army has never court-martialed a single
refusenik. After all, that would
open the military to a political trial in which it would be forced to answer questions
about compliance with
its own military laws-among them, a clause asserting that soldiers are required to
disobey illegal orders, and
others noting that Israeli military law comprises all the international conventions
(against torture, for
instance) to which Israel is a signatory.
Yesh Gvul activists are currently handing out leaflets to soldiers as they board buses
taking them to bases.
"Soldier, where are you headed?" the flyer demands. Reminding soldiers of the Fourth
Geneva Convention and
asking them whether they are willing to go to war to defend settlements, it cautions:
"The international
community has recently indicted soldiers who committed war crimes in Serbia, Bosnia,
Uganda, Chile and
elsewhere. The sentences ran to long years of imprisonment. Would you want to risk it?"
Chilling as that admonition is, soldiers board their buses with much counterbalancing
baggage, notes Ruti
Kantor, a graphic designer active with New Profile. "The military is practically holy
in Israel," she
explains. "Children are trained to worship it from early on. Boys are taught to define
their masculinity
through it, and girls are taught to admire them for it." Regular rituals in schools
glorify the IDF-often
children must participate in making presents to distribute to soldiers, for instance.
And then, for adults,
job opportunities are often linked to army service, and even the kind of unit one
served in. "The military
pervades our society at every level," says Kantor. The mother of a six-year-old girl
and 11-year-old boy, she
has been taking part in various efforts to reduce militarization in her kids' schools.
It astonishes her that
anyone finds the inner strength to resist what she calls "massive manipulation."
And yet, an increasing number of young Israelis are finding the courage to try.
Sergeiy Sandler, 26, endured
two 28-day sentences when he was conscripted because he declared himself a pacifist.
Born in the Ukraine,
Sandler immigrated to Israel at age six, and remembers the heavy indoctrination he
walked into when he started
school in his new country. His friends yearned to be combat heroes and saunter through
the streets of Tel Aviv
with machine guns on their shoulders. "Somehow it didn't work on me," Sandler says,
and when he grew up he
refused to don the olive uniform of the IDF. To his shock, however, none of his
friends or colleagues
criticized his choice. "Everything official-government, media, education is absolutely
dominated by the army
here," he says. "But unofficially the people are more inclined to my position than I
ever would have
imagined."
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