Just Saying No

Still, Israel has few pacifists -- only a fool would argue that the nation has no right or need to defend itself. Conscientious objection is highly problematic, and those who judge its validity case by case are army men, not civilians as in most countries. Refusal to serve, let alone conscientious objection, was practically unheard-of until 1982, when the Israeli invasion of Lebanon transformed the military from an army of defense to an army of occupation, prompting 168 soldiers to go to jail for refusing to serve in the campaign. Out of this group was born Yesh Gvul, whose name is a politically charged pun meaning both “There is a border” and “There is a limit.” In the 1987 Intifada, a further 200 soldiers, many of them officers, were imprisoned. The actual number of refusals was much higher, but the higher they got, the more reluctant became the military to attract publicity by jailing them.

Over the years, for reasons that have little to do with politics and everything to do with Israel modernizing into a prosperous, pluralist Western-style capitalist society, commitment to army service has seriously weakened. Today (or at least until the current Intifada), roughly a quarter of all conscripts avoid the draft, while only one-third of Israeli soldiers show up for the annual monthlong reserve duty. Many of the absentees are Ultra-Orthodox Jews, who are automatically excused; just as many are draft dodgers. Until the Intifada, the army had a manpower surplus and was in a position to tolerate no-shows. Now the country is effectively at war again, and the stakes are high, not so much for army avoiders as for dissenters of conscience who mobilize around the flag of selective refusal.

Trying to raise a live voice at Ometz Lesarev is only marginally easier than landing a private audience with the queen of England. The group has placed an embargo on talking to the international media, in part because its message is directed inward to Israelis, in part because most of them are ardent patriots and decorated officers who fear being co-opted by the anti-Zionist international left, many of whom have never really given the time of day to the Israeli opposition or the peace movement. Encouraged by broad hints that the embargo will soon be lifted, I persist. My e-mail contacts -- mostly refuseniks who are getting ready to tour the United States and their Jewish-American supporters in the peace movement -- politely direct me back to the group’s media spokesman, Amit Mashia. When I finally track him down on his cell phone, he tells me two days in a row that he can‘t talk right now. On the first day, he’s about to take part in a Memorial Day event for Israel‘s fallen soldiers. On the second, he has to report for reserve duty -- hopefully, he notes wryly, this side of the green line.

Ram Rahat, a 45-year-old Canadian-born activist with the more explicitly political Yesh Gvul, explains that though there are differences of nuance between his organization and Ometz Lesarev (the latter is younger, more mainstream, and does not advocate refusal to enlist at all), the two movements are united by the principle of selective refusal (usually to serve in the territories), and by their efforts to persuade soldiers not to take part in the occupation. “We are not negating the need for the army, we’re saying that the army cannot be used for political purposes, whether it was in 1982 with the invasion of Lebanon, or now with the occupation,” says Rahat. “Beyond that we see the whole framework of the occupation as one flagrantly illegal act, and if you go there you have no choice but to take part in order to take orders that are flagrantly illegal.” From his point of view, doing guard duty at a settlement may not be illegal from a minimalist point of view. “But if you look at it on a larger scale, being there is guarding something that is illegal as determined by international law.” Yesh Gvul believes that seeing the suicide bombings as the cause and the occupation as the result is going backward. “You have to drain the swamp,” says Rahat, “in order to get rid of the mosquitoes.”

For their part, most of the signatories to Ometz Lesarev justify their actions in moral rather than political terms. Their Web site (www.seruv.org.il) and the more enlightened Israeli newspapers carry heartfelt testimonies from the soldiers, 36 of whom are currently serving prison terms, about how they became, as one reservist torn between the “ethical code” and the “tribal code” he internalized in his youth puts it, “perfect occupation enforcers.” An infantryman tells how he finally cracked when a pregnant Palestinian woman was barred from passing through an Israeli roadblock because her stomach was not big enough, and later gave birth to a stillborn child. A paratrooper describes his revulsion when Israeli soldiers placed a sack over the head of a 4-year-old boy arrested with his father.

Minuscule as this group is, it has earned not only the scorn of the right, but the respect of unexpected sources in high places, including a former head of the Shin Beth, Israel‘s intelligence agency, as well as former Attorney General Michael Ben-Yair. In an op-ed piece written for the Israeli daily newspaper Ha’Aretz, Ben-Yair noted that “The Six-Day War‘s seventh day has transformed us from a moral society, sure of the justice of Israel’s creation, into a society that oppresses another people, preventing it from realizing its legitimate national aspirations.” Of Ometz Lesarev, Ben-Yair had this to say: “History‘s verdict will be that their refusal was the act that restored our moral backbone.”