The call by IDF officers and soldiers in January 2002 to refuse to
fight beyond the Green Line, Israel's pre-1967 border, for the
purpose of dominating, expelling, starving and humiliating an
entire people (the Palestinians) was signed by a total of 52
reservists. At the time of writing (October 2002) the number of
signatories to this call, named "Courage to Refuse", is about 500.
The whole "refusal community" which includes all those Israelis who
have refused military service for whatever reason since the
outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000, numbers about
1,000. One hundred and seventy refuseniks have been imprisoned,
some more than once. Similar numbers were jailed during the Lebanon
War and the first Intifada.
In looking at the history of the refusal movement and the
motivations behind it, the most important question of all is - what
affect have "refuseniks" had on the Israeli political discourse?
Apart from satisfying their own consciences, have they succeeded in
challenging the protracted domination of Israeli society by the
military and its values?
It is significant that in their original call under the heading
"There is a Choice", the 52 stress that while they oppose the
perpetuation of our domination over the Palestinian people, 'they
have been brought up on Zionism, self-sacrifice and contribution to
the Israeli people and the State of Israel' always 'serving in the
front line and having always been the first to carry out any
mission' in defense of Israel. Their protest appears, then, to be
more moral than purely political or ideological. In this they
differ from the older Yesh Gvul movement (the Hebrew means both
"There is a limit" and "There is a border") that arose in 1982 in
protest against the Lebanon War.
This outspoken, political anti-war movement rejected the views of
the larger mainstream Peace Now, which had been founded in 1978
and, while opposing the war, supported, and still supports,
continuing to serve in the IDF so as to obey the law and "influence
from within".
Selective Service
However, a common denominator between the refuseniks of 2002, who
strive to avoid marginality in Israeli society, and the radical
Yesh Gvul, is their adherence to the principle of selective
service. This is not the classical pacifist refusal to take up arms
in all circumstances, but the refusal to serve in particular cases
like the Lebanon War and the occupation. In the Israeli reality it
is understandable that, while there are some conscientious
objectors, selective service has a wider appeal. Though formally it
is claimed that refusal is "illegal", a judgment in the 1956 Kafr
Qasem case indicates otherwise: on the eve of the Sinai Campaign,
soldiers killed 49 Arab farmers who, on returning from their
fields, broke a curfew of which they were unaware. The judgment
held that an order issued "under the black flag of illegality ...
suspends the soldier's duty to obey and charges him with criminal
responsibility for his actions". It is this black flag that the
refuseniks believe has been hoisted by the Israelis over the
Occupied Territories, resulting in what they see as the "corruption
of the entire Israeli society". Thus in a message for the Jewish
New Year to members and supporters at home and abroad in September
2002, Courage to Refuse declared that in the past year, "we stood
up and said 'no more'. We will not participate in these actions
that are against our conscience and against all the values we
believe in. For the love of Israel we will not serve in the
Occupied Territories and support the moral deterioration of our
country".
Since the establishment of Israel, the IDF has enjoyed a unique
status in the public eye as a sort of holy cow. This is both
because of the priority of security in the life of the country and
because as a people's army largely maintained by reserve soldiers,
for years the IDF appeared in a sense to embody the whole people.
True, its prestige has been eroded over the years, especially since
the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Yet the Israeli political system is
still, to a disproportionate extent, dominated by those who serve
or served in the military establishment. Four of the last five
prime ministers came from the army or the security sector. The
sensitive security situation and a high degree of military hegemony
over civilian life does not provide an encouraging environment for
a movement opposing IDF service.
A Fleeting Episode?
Now, as in the Lebanon War, the numbers of refuseniks are probably
greater than the official figures because the IDF is not interested
in filling the jails with them. While they are all first invited to
a discussion with their commanding officers and warned that they
will be removed from their posts, some soldiers, be they high
ranking officers or sergeant-majors, may be quietly redirected, as
long as they keep their views to themselves, to tasks they can
accept.
Those who are not ready to compromise are imprisoned and there are
already examples of soldiers, mainly reservists, who are serving
their fourth sentence of a month in a military prison. They are
sentenced not in military tribunals (where they could at least
argue their case) but in disciplinary hearings. They come from
Courage to Serve, Yesh Gvul and other organizations, or are
unaffiliated; some are conscientious objectors who must appear
before an IDF "conscience committee", Israel and Ecuador being the
only countries in the world where a military, rather than a
civilian, body deals with such cases and under a ruling from the
1980s, selective refusal is not seen as valid conscientious
objection; however, a lawyer defending one of the original
signatories of the refusal letter said that for his client, "an
order to serve in the territories is like ordering a religious
person to eat non-kosher food."
Public interest was aroused by the refusal of three reserve Air
Force pilots to bomb non-military targets in Lebanon and to reject
unthinking compliance with orders for indiscriminating bombing. The
Air Force Commander, Dan Halutz, was strongly criticized for
responding that "he had no qualms, military or moral, over the
deaths of civilians as a result of an assassination operation, that
he slept well at night and the only thing he feels when he releases
a bomb is a slight jarring of the airplane" (Ha'aretz
27.9.02).
Yet apart from particularly "newsworthy" events like the original
'Courage to Refuse' call and appeals to the High Court of Justice,
the media tends to ignore the refusal movement. In what has been
called "a conspiracy of silence", the chairman of the popular TV
Channel Two ordered reduced coverage of the movement so as "not to
inflate a phenomenon which is a fleeting episode and a marginal
manifestation".
History's Verdict
Nevertheless, there is solid evidence that in spite of everything,
the movement exerts a wider influence than the Establishment likes
to admit. In two public opinion polls taken in February 2000, 20-23
percent supported the refuseniks outright while an even larger
percentage disagreed with them but backed their right to act as
they did. It was only following their accusations against military
misconduct that the judge advocate saw fit to publish a series of
orders on norms of behavior that were meant to obligate soldiers in
the occupation army.
It is noteworthy that many of the personalities supporting refusal,
and their reasoning, break new ground since they had no previous
association with the peace camp. Take for example Israel's attorney
general from 1993 to 1996, Michael Ben-Yair, who wrote that, "since
1967 we have become a colonial society, ignoring international
treaties, expropriating lands, transferring settlers from Israel to
the occupied territories ...the Intifada is the Palestinian
people's war of liberation and no nation is prepared to live under
another's domination." He associates the occupation regime with,
"the killing of little children fleeing for safety; the executions,
without trial, of wanted persons ... and the encirclements,
closures and roadblocks that turned the lives of millions into a
nightmare." He sees refusal to serve as, "an act of conscience that
is justified and recognized in every democratic regime. History's
verdict will be that refusal was the act that restored our moral
backbone" (Ha'aretz 3.3.02). These are startling views coming from
a former senior official who was always considered a pillar of the
establishment.
Another significant comment expressing sympathy for the concept of
refusal was made on television by Ami Ayalon, a former head of both
the Israeli Navy and Israeli Intelligence. Ayalon said that
soldiers should not obey orders that are "blatantly illegal". He
added that, "as far as I am concerned, too few soldiers are
refusing such orders. For example, an order to shoot an unarmed
youth is a blatantly illegal order. I am very worried by the number
of Palestinian children shot in the past year." Such comments are
not usual on TV, but they take on special significance when made by
such a respected ex-soldier on his own initiative. These examples
merely purport to show that if the IDF thought, as people like
former chief of staff and now Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz
intimated, that the refusal phenomenon was a passing phase
involving only marginal leftist elements, they misread the
situation.
The refusal letter also caused some disarray in the dovish
opposition Meretz party. Like Peace Now, MK Yossi Sarid, the
official leader of the opposition, has always opposed refusal. A
number of Meretz MKs challenged the party line and expressed
sympathy with the refuseniks: the leader of the Knesset faction MK
Zehava Gal-on even paid a solidarity visit to the prison where some
signatories were serving time. It is important to note that
Shulamit Aloni, a veteran human rights activist who enjoys
universal respect, also supported the refusal letter. Prominent
peace activist Uri Avnery of the Peace Bloc came out in support of
the refuseniks and he was backed by a coalition of smaller radical
groups like the women's peace movement, Bat Shalom.
Voice of a Singer
Yet the impact of the refusal letter upon public opinion was best
shown, unexpectedly, neither by politicians, demonstrators,
generals, journalists, or academics, but by a singer, 76-year-old
Yaffa Yarkoni. Known to all Israelis as "the singer of Israel's
wars" because since the 1948 War of Independence she has been
appearing before the troops with songs expressing patriotism, love
of the homeland and nostalgia. This year, as every year, she was
scheduled to broadcast a message on the eve of Memorial Day for
Israel's fallen soldiers. An Israel Prize laureate, she was
expected to pay a tribute to "our wonderful soldiers", then play
one of her famous songs, such as, "Have faith, the day will
come".
But this time Yaffa Yarkoni broke ranks. She told Army Radio; "I
justify anyone refusing today to serve in the territories after
what is being done there. My son-in-law is among the refuseniks.
This is their opinion and it is their right to do what their
conscience tells them to do." She said that all the territories
conquered in 1967 should be returned to the Palestinians in return
for peace. Recalling past wars to secure our existence, she asked -
what are we fighting for today, for territory? "We have again
reached a situation where the whole world is against us. We are a
people who went through the Holocaust. How are we capable of doing
such things: when I saw young (Palestinian) men being led away with
hands tied behind their backs, I said this is like what was done to
us and to our children in the Holocaust". She was particularly
upset at seeing soldiers inscribing numbers on the arms of
Palestinian suspects. Earlier in the interview she said that if the
position doesn't improve, she would recommend to her grandchildren
to leave the country. "Why should they suffer? Why should they go
through what we went through?"
The headline in the mass circulation Yediot Aharonot read, "Yaffa
Yarkoni: scenes from the territories look like the Holocaust";
Amnon Dankner, editor of Ma'ariv, wrote that Yaffa Yarkoni, "has
joined the new anti-Semites in Europe"; a professor of chemistry
called her "a Holocaust denier". With the cancellation of her
scheduled performances in various parts of the county, the powerful
Union of Performing Artists (EMI) canceled a planned gala concert
in Jaffa celebrating her 50-year career and 1,000 recordings. The
boycott was strongly attacked by the Minister of Science, Culture
and Sport, Matan Vilnai, who disagreed with her views but demanded
"an end to the devils' dance against Yaffa Yarkoni". In an article
called "Banning songs, burning books", Tallie Lipkin-Shahak wrote
in The Jerusalem Post that, "McCarthyism is expanding and we are
going out of our minds. How else can you explain the furious
reactions to any expressions of a different opinion, any word of
criticism against the government's policy and the IDF's operations?
It is like burning books" (26.4.02).
Desmond Tutu's Comparison
The protestors were, of course, in the minority and the last two
years have witnessed an atmosphere of growing intolerance toward
dissenting views, and stronger measures against freedom of speech,
justified by the needs of the fight against terror. A telling
example of this is the campaign for legislation aimed at silencing
Arab Knesset members. In spite of all the evidence to the contrary,
most Israelis still believe that Prime Minister Sharon's policies
are dictated by the country's predominant security needs. Detailed
reports of wholesale denial of human rights and horrific IDF
policies in the Occupied Territories published regularly by
organizations like B'Tselem don't change the picture.
Sometimes, for example over Sabra and Shatila, people abroad see
things in a different and clearer perspective than those at home.
Thus in an article called; "Build moral pressure to end the
occupation" (International Herald Tribune, 14.6.02), Nobel Prize
laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote of; "the relevance of the
South African experience to the current (Middle East) conflict. In
a region where repressive governments and unjust policies are the
norm, Israel is certainly more democratic that most of its
neighbors. This does not make dismantling the settlements any less
of a priority". Tutu goes on to say that, "the growing Israeli
refusenik movement evokes the small anti-conscription drive which
helped to turn the tide in South Africa. Several hundred decorated
Israeli officers have refused to perform military service in the
Occupied Territories. If apartheid ended, so can the occupation,
but the moral force and international pressure will have to be just
as determined".
The Occupation is Illegal
This is a more hopeful perspective than dissenting Israelis usually
permit themselves. Eight IDF combat officers and soldiers have
petitioned Israel's High Court of Justice to recognize their
refusal to serve in the territories as legal because in the last
two years "it is the Israeli occupation and IDF activities which
are illegal". Whereas the state accuses the refuseniks of "civil
rebellion", the petition refers to the occupation as "a system
which consists entirely of collective punishment of a civilian
population that today numbers over three million ... the State of
Israel and the IDF have in recent years entirely absolved
themselves of their duty according to international (and Israeli)
law." The petition speaks of war crimes such as targeted
assassinations where dozens of innocent passersby have been killed,
the destruction of homes and orchards, abuse at checkpoints, and
economic ruin and unemployment resulting from curfews and closures.
"Illegality has come to dominate all the strata of military
activity in the Occupied Territories and makes the occupation as a
whole illegal."
One can hardly expect that Israel's highest judicial body will
declare the occupation, and the whole range of IDF activities which
enforce it, to be illegal. Yet whatever the outcome of the
petition, the refusal movement has succeeded in placing these life
and death questions firmly on the national agenda. In the coming
period they will become increasingly decisive in shaping Israeli
policies in the conflict, and in determining the whole Israeli
future. Forcing Israel to face this predicament is perhaps the
primary significance of the refusal movement.