Tag Archives: Yesh Gvul

Refusal

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Here is another extract from an autobiographical book I am writing about how my life has crossed paths with Israel-Palestine. In this passage I recount my refusal to serve in the in the Israeli army in the Palestinian Occupied Territories in 1995.

Having remained a temporary resident in Israel for as long as I could, I had delayed my compulsory service. By the time I became a citizen I was only required to serve three months, but I had postponed even that duty by going away for a year for my postdoctorate. In 1994 the army caught up with me again and I was due to serve in early 1995. It was already very clear in my mind that I would refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories, which would mean spending some time in military jail. There was no way I was going to become the military occupier of my Palestinian dialogue partners. I knew people who had been through the experience, especially Lev Grinberg, who had refused to serve in Lebanon, and Ofer Cassif, the first reservist to refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories during the intifada. Lev also put me in touch with other members of Yesh Gvul so I could hear from others, including one person who had become fairly well-known because the army insisted on calling him up again as soon as he was released, meaning he was given repeated sentences of imprisonment. I also read accounts by a couple of refuseniks who had been jailed. Having put off my service so long, I was already classed as a reservist, so I knew I would be locked up with other reservists, mostly people who had tried to evade service, not facing the scarier prospect of jail for regular recruits. It was, nonetheless, a worrying scenario, so I did not know how I would cope. Even up until the day I reported for duty at the local recruitment office in Jerusalem, I was trying to get through to an intelligence officer whose number I had been given by a university colleague who thought I might find an option there.

The evening before I had to report for duty I took quiet time to reflect on what I was about to do, turning to the pages of my book about Foucault for passages to strengthen my resolve:

Foreswear the dream of a perfect world in which all has been done and all is safe, but cherish the agonism of open strategic games in which everything remains to be done. Love your liberty, which you have when you can act and do so. Take care of yourself; know ‘yourself’ by transgressing your limits; practise liberty.[1]

It made sense to me at the time, realising I was the intended audience for my own book. Refusal would be the practice of my liberty, an option for action available to me. By refusing, I was transgressing the limits of the Zionist subject as which I had been constituted by my background and participation in Habonim-Dror, a Zionist youth movement. I would become a different self.

My brother came to the recruitment centre to see me off as I got onto a bus to the main recruitment camp, Bakum, the reception and sorting base in the centre of the country. The first stage was some form-filling, where I hesitated about refusing to sign some sort of declaration about agreeing to follow orders. I spent the rest of the day avoiding being recruited by any of the units looking for reliable new members – medics, military engineers, home front – by telling them I intended to find work abroad. At the end of the day I found myself with a large crowd of Russian-speakers, fed, given blankets and sent to sleep in tents. I did not sleep well, both because I had underestimated how cold it would be and because I was anxious about what faced me the next day. I was awake very early, found some hot water and took a shower before anyone else was awake.

We were organised into groups to walk down to the car park where buses were waiting, though we did not know where they were headed. I told the corporal in charge of my group that I would not get onto a bus going to the Occupied Territories. He told me not to worry, just to walk down with everyone else. When we got there, I saw a sign on the bus reading Bahad 4, a base which I knew was close to Ramallah and the settlement of Beit El. So, I refused to get on the bus. Over the next hour, I was variously cajoled and yelled at in an effort to get me on the bus. Someone told me that he worked on the base and also hated the settlers, but I did not need to have anything to do with them. Another person tried to make me afraid of what would happen to me in jail, telling me I would be made another prisoner’s bitch. An officer from the base grabbed my backpack and went to put it on the bus, which was distressing as I had borrowed it from my roommate. We tussled over the backpack and at one point I realised that if I let go, the officer would fall backwards, so I held on as I did not want to annoy him any further.

Eventually, another officer approached me, spoke to me gently, explained that he was in charge of the whole recruitment process that day, that if I refused to get on the bus I would be sent to jail, but then added that if I had any problems I wanted to discuss with him, he would be available in the next ten minutes. After a poor night’s sleep the penny was slow to drop, but I realised I was being offered a way out, so I repeated the story about looking for work abroad. I barely finished the sentence when he told me to join a small group of other new recruits waiting at the side. It turned out that there were about dozen more of us than places on the training programmes, so we were to serve on the sorting base for the week, which meant that those of us who could get home and back for an early morning start were free to go. I had woken up in the morning expecting to be in jail that evening and instead was back home in Jerusalem.

At the end of the week I spent on the base I met the officer from the parking lot again. He was intelligent and calm, interested in studying Political Science at university and curious about that. We chatted about the prospects for peace and the likelihood that Bahad 4 and other training bases would be withdrawn from the West Bank. Bahad 4 was indeed later moved from near Ramallah to Zikim, near Ashkelon, under the terms of Oslo II, the Interim Agreement on the West Bank and Gaza, signed in September 1995. I fed him my narrative about needing time to look for work overseas at that time of the year, which he accepted as grounds not to serve my three months then. He asked me to agree that if he gave me a deferment until a date in July, I would agree to go wherever I was sent, but did not ask me to sign anything. I did have the opportunity both in the parking lot and in his office to be adamant about my refusal to serve in the Occupied Territories and be sent to jail. Yet, it was also true that I was looking for a job overseas and that I was not being ordered to serve in the Territories at that point. I had no desire to be a hero, to go to jail when I did not need to in order to avoid becoming a military occupier. So, I was part of the ‘grey refusal,’ the undocumented cases of recruits and reservists who found a way to be selective conscientious objectors, unwilling to serve in the army of occupation in the Territories.

[1] Jon Simons, Foucault and the Political (London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 124-25.

Open Letter to Natan Blanc, an Israeli conscientious objector

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Poster for Yesh Gvul solidarity protest for Natan Blanc

Poster for Yesh Bgvul solidarity protest for Natan Blanc

Natan Blanc

Natan Blanc

Dear Natan,
I am sorry that I cannot be with you in solidarity today on the hill opposite Atlit prison, taking part in the protest against your detention. I am far away in the Unites States, on a wintry, snowy day in Indiana, though rain or shine, I would much rather be spending my day with other activists on the buses organised by the refuser-group, Yesh Gvul, bringing you some moral support as you serve your fifth spell in military jail no. 6. Outside jail, the 20 days of this sentence, in addition to the previous four sentences since November 19, 2012, would slip by quickly. Inside, the time and boredom must weigh heavily on you. It takes a great deal of fortitude to be willing to serve one sentence after another, to persist in your refusal to serve in the Israeli armed forces. We have been privileged to read recently the intimate account by another conscientious objector, Moriel Rothman, of his spell in military jail. From afar, I can only admire your determination and commend the sacrifice you are willing to make for the sake of justice and peace.

I don’t know how much it helps you as you serve your sentence to imagine the people in Israel and beyond who want to give you their strength in support of your ethical stance. But in any case, let me say a little about myself. Some 18 years ago, as a (by then not so new) immigrant, I was inducted into the Israeli armed forces but refused to get on a bus taking us for basic training in the Occupied Territories. I, however, was lucky enough not to have to test my mettle for more than an hour, when an officer prompted me to come up with a personal problem so that I could stay at Tel Hashomer (the induction base) for another week. The same officer then released me until another induction date a few months later, and by the time that day came around I had found my first academic position in the UK and left Israel. It was hard enough to stand my ground for an hour in the car park in the face of various threats and cajolements: I don’t know what it feels like to persist and endure for more than 70 days.

Unlike myself, who grew up in Britain, for most of my teens in the warm environment of a Zionist youth movement, Habonim-Dror, you have had to find your way through the intensive socialization of the Israeli education system on the value and benefits of military service. More than that, you must have to contend with a huge amount of peer pressure, to toe the line, to do your duty to “defend” your country, to prove yourself as a man, to turn yourself into a “full” Israeli citizen, to take on your share of the burden that so many voices today clamor to share equally. In your refusal declaration, you show how clearly you see the blindness, denial, and even outright hypocrisy in all these statements about duty, defense and nationalism. As you say:

It is clear that the Netanyahu Government … is not interested in finding a solution to the existing situation, but rather in preserving it. From their point of view, there is nothing wrong with our initiating a “Cast Lead 2″ operation every three or four years … and we will prepare the ground for a new generation full of hatred on both sides. As … citizens and human beings, [we] have a moral duty to refuse to participate in this cynical game.

Somehow in your 19 year old wisdom you have already learned to see through the ingrained militarism of Israeli culture and society. You already practise the principles of New Profile, the feminist anti-militarism organisation that opposes the occupation, advocates the right of conscientious objection to military service, and supports you and other refusers practically. In their charter, they write that:

we refuse to go on raising our children to see enlistment as a supreme and overriding value. We want a fundamentally changed education system, for a truly democratic civic education, teaching the practice of peace and conflict resolution, rather than training children to enlist and accept warfare.

So, you do not see military service as a value, but instead have taken on another burden, another duty, an ethical duty to refuse to participate in the ongoing oppression and violence of the occupation.
But I do not share equally with you the burden of that duty. Nor when I was 19 could I see as clearly as you do now. No doubt at some point you will be – have been – called a coward. But you are braver than your conformist accusers. You will be told that you are naïve, a lover of your enemies. Yet, you are wiser than your detractors, the purveyors of hate. You will be told that you are a shirker, yet you have taken on a greater burden than any of those cogs in the machines of war and occupation. Thank you for your service.