Father, forgive me, I will not
fight for your Israel
Omer
Goldman, daughter of a former Mossad chief, tells why she prefers jail to the
military draft
Igal
Sarna
Omer Goldman is a pretty girl, slender as a model. Never still, very
restless, she is filled with anxiety by the expected loss of her freedom. For
months before she refused to be drafted into the Israel Defence Forces, she went
to a psychologist every week to prepare for what was to come: incarceration in a
cell in a military prison.
I met her several times last month in an apartment with other girls who are
conscientious objectors. Together they would hand out flyers against Israel’s
occupation of the West Bank and Gaza at the gates of a high school like the one
she left a year ago.
On her last day of freedom as a civilian, I saw her at the gates of the
intake base to which she had received orders to report for
induction into a two-year stint with the defence forces, like every Israeli
girl. She had come to refuse the draft, to be tried and to be imprisoned
immediately.
Several dozen supporters showed up – members of Anarchists Against the Wall,
her mother and a few girlfriends – and she stayed close to them as though she
were trying to delay the end, the moment when she would clash all alone with the
army.
For Omer, this transition is sharper and more surprising than for most
conscientious objectors: she is the daughter of the former
deputy head of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, the man who nearly
became its head.
Omer grew up all her life in the warm bosom of a huge security establishment
that has now become an enemy rather than a friend. Her father appears in the
newspapers as N. He was a senior intelligence officer who transferred to Mossad
and climbed to the top until in 2007 he became the deputy to Mossad’s chief,
Meir Dagan, now considered the most powerful mystery man in the Israeli security
system.
N, whose speciality is Iran, was spoken of as Dagan’s designated successor,
but Dagan had no intention of retiring. Differences of opinion developed between
the two strong bosses, and N resigned in June 2007.
This was the time when his 18-year-old daughter Omer, a pampered child of the
wealthy suburb of Ramat Hasharon, was beginning to move away from the usual
high-school- to-army trajectory.
In parallel to her father’s struggle and his resignation from Mossad, Omer
rebelled against the path he had paved for her and went to have a look at
Palestinian life on the other side of
the wall. Call this an adolescent’s rebellion against her father or a
battle for the heart of a father who had left home.
She is one of about 40 pupils who signed a school-leavers’ protest letter
this year. Thirty-eight years ago the first such letter – a counterblast against
the occupation and the war of attrition, sent by pupils in the final year of my
secondary school to Golda Meir, the prime minister – caused an uproar.
There have been other letters since then, and although the furore is not what
it was, in Israel conscientious objection still arouses
cold, self-righteous wrath.
Omer told me that the crucial moment of her metamorphosis
occurred this year when she went to a Palestinian village where the Israeli army
had set up a roadblock. Someone she had considered her enemy all her life stood
beside her and someone who was supposed to be defending her opened fire at her.
“We were sitting by the roadside talking and soldiers
came along and after a few seconds they received an order and fired gas grenades
and rubber bullets at us. Then it struck me, to my
astonishment, that the soldiers were following an order without thinking. For
the first time in my life, an Israeli soldier raised his weapon and fired at
me.”
And when you told your father? “Dad was astonished and angry that I had been
there and endangered my life. After that we had conversations. He supported me
as his daughter and we have a good relationship, but he is decidedly opposed to
what I do and even more to my refusal to serve in the army.
“At first he thought this was a passing phase of adolescence and later he
understood that this is coming from a place deep inside me. He and I have very
similar characters. I, too, fight to the end for what I believe in. But we are
opposites ideologically.”
When I ask more about her father, Omer smiles and does not answer. A rare
moment of silence.
On September 23 she refused to serve in the army, was
tried and was sent to prison for 21 days. This week she will be tried again –
and again, until the army tires or she tires.
In two weeks’ time my own son Noam is due to join the army, and I will be
accompanying him to the base where I last saw Omer Goldman. Unlike her, Noam
intends to do his military service. I understand them both.
http://www.timesonl ine.co.uk/ tol/news/ world/middle_ east/article4925 056.ece
__________________________________________________________________
Connect with friends from any web browser - no download required. Try the new
Yahoo! Canada Messenger for the Web BETA at
http://ca.messenger.yahoo.com/webmessengerpromo.php
