A letter sent by 62 high school seniors to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon succeeded in doing what demonstrations and protest actions of the radical left-wing movements have not. It brought the issue of conscientious objection to army service to the attention of the Israeli public. Further fueling interest in the subject was the fact that another conscientious object was the nephew of former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

Enlistment into the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), shortly after graduation from high school, is a rite of passage for Israeli youth. Before even considering university studies, Israel's teenagers give up their schoolbooks and don the rough green and khaki-colored uniforms, the high-topped black army boots and the slanted beret of the IDF. These youths undergo a strenuous period of basic training, learning to march, fire M-16 rifles, salute, throw grenades, give first aid and prepare for chemical and biological warfare, all in the name of defending the State of Israel.

Not all Israeli teenagers enlist in the IDF at the completion of their high school studies. For Israeli girls, it is not particularly difficult to receive exemption from military service. Girls from observant families are entitled to do alternative sherut leumi (national service) in hospitals and in schools. Ultra-Orthodox young men are usually able to defer their service and continue their yeshiva studies instead. Moslem and Christian Arabs are not required to serve, although Druze, Circassian, and Bedouin citizens do. But for secular young Jewish men, enlistment in the IDF is a national requirement, and there are very few ways to escape the draft.

Even so, there are those who do not serve. Though their numbers are small, there are Israeli youths who refuse to serve in the Israeli Defense Forces and who proclaim themselves conscientious objectors. Some of them are pacifists while others refuse to serve in the territories.
Recently, 62 high school seniors wrote a letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and announced their refusal to serve in the army due to its policy of "oppressing" the Palestinians.

It can be argued that the existence of conscientious objectors to Israeli military service is little more than a marginal occurrence. Over the years there have been reservists and draftees who have announced their objections to enlistment and/or service in the territories. Their numbers have been relatively small and their actions, including their imprisonment, have resulted in little publicity or change in Israeli society.

Students grab public's attention with army refusal
The letter was sent by 62 youths who were in their last months of civilian life before their enlistment into the ranks of the IDF. Some of these youths refused to serve altogether, and labeled themselves pacifists. Some of them refused to serve in the "occupied" territories. The youths said that they would report to the Israeli draft board and announce their refusal to serve on grounds that they are conscientious objectors. Some of them may very well find themselves in prison as a result, as IDF service is a legally binding requirement of Israeli law.

"We strongly resist Israel's pounding of human rights. Land expropriation, arrests, executions without a trial, house demolition, closure, torture, and the prevention of health care are only some of the crimes the state of Israel carries out, in blunt violation of international conventions it has ratified.

"Therefore we will obey our conscience and refuse to take part in acts of oppression against the Palestinian people, acts that should properly be called terrorist actions. We call upon persons our age, conscripts, soldiers in the standing army, and reserve service soldiers to do the same."
From the letter sent to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon by 62 Israeli high school seniors

The letter of the high school students found its way to the Internet, where it was first published on the ynet website. According to Yediot Aharonot, most of the teenage boys and girls who signed the letter know each other. Most of them participated in left-wing organizations and have been present in various demonstrations of the Left.

The letter sent by the 62 high school seniors was not the first letter sent by youths to an Israeli Prime Minister to receive mention in the media. In 1970, 58 youths wrote to Prime Minister Golda Meir, who at the time reportedly decided not to go to Cairo to open negotiations with Egyptian President Gammel Abdel Nasser. "Until now we believed that we went to fight and serve for three years [in the IDF] because there was no alternative," the youths wrote. "Now it turns out there was an alternative [for peace], even though it is small, and [our leaders] pay no attention to it."

In 1978, 80 Tel Aviv high school students wrote to Prime Minister Menachem Begin and charged that if he didn't recognize Palestinian self-determination, his hands would be covered in their blood, the blood of fallen soldiers. The following year, 27 students wrote a letter to the Defense Minister and announced their refusal to serve in the "occupied territories" due to their objection to Israeli policies against the Palestinians. In 1987, in an updated version of the letter, 16 high school seniors wrote to Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin of their refusal to serve in the territories.

Media focuses on IDF "refuseniks"
Some of the recent cases of Israeli youths refusing to serve in the IDF have received attention in the media. Yonathan Ben-Artzi, 18, the nephew of Sarah Netanyahu, wife of former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, filed a petition with the Israeli High Court in which he asked for an exemption from his army service. Ben-Artzi, a graduate of a Jerusalem high school, told Maariv that he is "a pacifist, and does not want to enlist in a violent organization like the IDF or any other army."

When asked if his uncle, a former combat soldier in an elite commando unit, approved of his pacifist stand, Ben-Artzi said, "He was prime minister and he knows that Israel is a democratic country. In a democracy there is respect for the principles of pacifism." Ben-Artzi says that he considered doing national service instead of his required time in the army, but "in Israel there is no sherut leumi for boys."

According to Maariv, the IDF committee that originally heard Ben-Artzi's request for an exemption was not impressed by his convictions and turned him down. Ben-Artzi blames them for total ignorance of pacifist ideology. He is convinced that IDF officers, who choose to serve in the army and identify with army values and a military career, could never objectively judge and decide on matters of conscientious objection.

According to a recent report in Ha'aretz, "there are currently six soldiers in the regular army and the reserves who are serving time in three military prisons for refusing to serve in the army or in the territories." One of these soldiers is Avia Atai, 19, a former youth leader in the Scouts who decided even before she was drafted into the IDF that she would not bear arms or serve in the occupied territories. Before her draft date, Avia took a pre-army course given by the Jewish National Fund, which trained her to be a youth leader in the IDF on topics related to JNF projects. When she finished basic training, she served as a soldier-youth leader in the Kennedy Forest near Jerusalem.

"Last week, Atai was asked by her superiors to take on another assignment: teaching children and teens in Jerusalem's Gilo neighborhood how to defend themselves from bullets, mortar shells and bombs. Atai refused, explaining that she lacked the proper training. If they don't want to endanger the lives of children in streets that are under fire, the safest way is to take them out of there, she suggested. The decision to leave children in the line of fire, she added, is political, and therefore, the job of protecting and defending them should be given to those who were trained to do so."
From Ha'aretz

Avia was sentenced to 28 days in prison for her refusal to serve in Gilo.

In May two reserve soldiers were each sentenced to 14 days in an IDF prison after they refused to serve in the territories. One of them said during his trial, "It is not my duty to serve in an army that acts towards repressing a civilian population." At the end of July, Yishai Sagi, a lieutenant called up for his reserve duty, was sentenced to 26 days in a military jail for his refusal to serve in the territories. "I was raised as a human and a soldier for whom the value of protecting human life is the most important value of all, more important than obeying a military order," Sagi explained. According to Sagi, "the actions of the army in the territories damage this basic value."

Small organizations support student and soldier protestors
High school students protesting their enlistment and reserve soldiers refusing to serve in the territories have found support from two small organizations.

According to a spokesman for Yesh Gvul, "an Israeli peace group that has shouldered the task of supporting soldiers who refuse assignments of a repressive or aggressive nature," eleven soldiers in the reserves and 6 soldiers in the regular army have been sentenced to prison for their refusal to serve in the territories since the start of the current Intifada. Yesh Gvul (Hebrew for "there is a limit") was founded in response to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, when 168 servicemen were jailed, some repeatedly, for refusing to serve in the campaign. According to the organization, the actual number of refusals during the war in Lebanon was far greater, but their rising numbers deterred the military authorities from prosecuting most of the refuseniks.

Yesh Gvul explains that the refusal of IDF soldiers to serve in the territories, known as "selective refusal," is a uniquely Israeli concept, though sporadic protests on similar lines have been recorded in other armies.

"While acknowledging the legality of universal military service, it stresses the right and duty of every soldier to scrutinize the orders he receives, and reject assignments he finds morally or politically repugnant. Unlike pacifism or conscientious objection, selective refusal recognizes circumstances when force is legitimate, as in defense against external aggression, or in pursuit of national liberation from foreign tyranny. But it rejects the abuse of military might for unworthy ends, such as wars of aggression, or violent subjugation of a civilian population."
From Yesh Gvul

In September Yesh Gvul made a public call to soldiers to refuse "to participate in war crimes," declaring that "shooting unarmed civilians, including children, shelling and bombing of residential neighborhoods, assassinations, destruction of homes, withholding of food and medical care, and destruction of sources of income" are actions "that are defined in international and in Israeli law as war crimes."

Another organization dealing with conscientious objectors and soldiers who refuse to serve is New Profile, a movement to turn Israel into a civil society. New Profile aims "to provide a support system to those who resist induction into the army, whether based on political, religious or moral belief."

"We are convinced that we ourselves, our children, our partners, need not go on being endlessly mobilized, need not go on living as warriors. We understand that the state of war in Israel is maintained by decisions made by our politicians - not by external forces to which we are passively subject."
From the New Profile charter

According to Yesh Gvul and New Profile, the phenomenon of declaring a refusal to serve in the IDF has grown recently, especially as a result of the current Intifada. Others charge that Yesh Gvul, New Profile and the publicity given to the few cases of conscientious objection are taking a marginal movement and presenting it in inaccurate dimensions.

The Israel Defense Forces Spokesman's Office said that the army has no statistics on the number of inductees and reserve soldiers who voice a refusal to serve, and it does not intend to comment on the issue, Ha'aretz reported.

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