Speaking Out

When Enough is Enough

By Nicholas Martin

Peace groups and petitions there are many, also in Israel. But in January 2002, a genuinely different movement sprang up, and has since been gathering momentum: the movement of reserve combat officers and soldiers, who refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories.
Refusal to fight as such is nothing particularly new in Israel; already during the war in Lebanon and the first Palestinian intifada in the 1980s, officers and soldiers openly refused. But until now it has mostly been a "grey and limited phenomena" (Baruch Kimmerling). That is certainly not the case today, 472 have so far signed the Reserve Combat Officers' and Soldiers' Petition, similar petitions of selective refusal (i.e. not serving in the Territories) have been signed by well over a thousand servicemen all in all.
What sets the 'seruvniks' (from the Hebrew word 'seruv' - refusal) aside from other peace movements is both the direct challenge they pose to the state, and the sheer credibility they possess by virtue of their position in one of Israel's most sacred and central institutions - the Israeli Defence Force (IDF).
This appears paradoxical, but it means that their provocation cannot be dismissed through the usual counter-accusations: they are neither self-hating Jews, nor biased, nor do they belong to the far-left fringe.
Having often served long years in the Occupied Territories, the 'refuseniks' can hardly be dismissed as critics from the Diaspora, living far away and just unable to understand the situation, nor, importantly, is it possible to accuse them of simply and treacherously trying to save their skins. Their declaration, see below, is then also steeped in patriotic language.
Fierce criticism has nonetheless been forthcoming: Amnon Rubinstein, a leader of the liberal and 'doveish' Meeretz party accused the seruvniks of redefining "the meaning of 'morality' and 'conscience,'" whilst the Guardian reports that Sharon blamed strings of suicide bombings on the refusers.
But what is the cause of their refusal, why would a "regular guy" one morning decide to refuse, and what led him to take this decision, why now? Below, we give the Reserve Combatants' Declaration and let two refuseniks, Asaf Oron and Avi Blum, find answers to these questions.

Reserve Combatants' Declaration

We, reserve combat officers and soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces, who were raised upon the principles of Zionism, sacrifice and giving to the people of Israel and to the State of Israel, who have always served in the front lines, and who were the first to carry out any mission, light or heavy, in order to protect the State of Israel and strengthen it.
We, combat officers and soldiers who have served the State of Israel for long weeks every year, in spite of the dear cost to our personal lives, have been on reserve duty all over the Occupied Territories, and were issued commands and directives that had nothing to do with the security of our country, and that had the sole purpose of perpetuating our control over the Palestinian people. We, whose eyes have seen the bloody toll this Occupation exacts from both sides.
We, who sensed how the commands issued to us in the Territories, destroy all the values we had absorbed while growing up in this country.
We, who understand now that the price of Occupation is the loss of IDF's human character and the corruption of the entire Israeli society.
We, who know that the Territories are not Israel, and that all settlements are bound to be evacuated in the end.
We hereby declare that we shall not continue to fight this War of the Settlements.
We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people.
We hereby declare that we shall continue serving in the Israel Defense Forces in any mission that serves Israel's defense.
The missions of occupation and oppression do not serve this purpose – and we shall take no part in them.

Asaf Oron:

On February 5, 1985, I got up, left my home, went to the Compulsory Service Center on Rashi Street in Jerusalem, said goodbye to my parents, boarded the rickety old bus going to the Military Absorption Station and turned into a soldier.
Exactly seventeen years later, I find myself in a head to head confrontation with the army, while the public at large is jeering and mocking me from the sidelines. Right wingers see me as a traitor who is dodging the holy war that's just around the corner. The political center shakes a finger at me self-righteously and lectures me about undermining democracy and politicizing the army. And the left? The square, establishment, "moderate" left that only yesterday was courting my vote now turns its back on me as well. Everyone blabbers about what is and what is not legitimate, exposing in the process the depth of their ignorance of political theory and their inability to distinguish a real democracy from a third world regime in the style of Juan Peron.
Almost no one asks the main question: why would a regular guy get up one morning in the middle of life, work, the kids and decide he's not playing the game anymore? And how come he is not alone but there are fifty… I beg your pardon, a hundred… beg your pardon again, now almost two hundred regular, run of the mill guys like him who've done the same thing?
Our parents' generation lets out a sigh: we've embarrassed them yet again. But isn't it all your fault? What did you raise us on? Universal ethics and universal justice, on the one hand: peace, liberty and equality to all. And on the other hand: "the Arabs want to throw us into the sea, " "They are all crafty and primitive. You can't trust them." On the one hand, the songs of John Lennon, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Bob Marely, Pink Floyd. Songs of peace and love and against militarism and war.
On the other hand, songs about a sweetheart riding the tank after sunset in the field: "The tank is yours and you are ours." [allusions to popular Israeli songs – AK]. I was raised on two value systems: one was the ethical code and the other the tribal code, and I na?vely believed that the two could coexist.
This is the way I was when I was drafted. Not enthusiastic, but as if embarking on a sacred mission of courage and sacrifice for the benefit of society. But when, instead of a sacred mission, a 19 year old finds himself performing the sacrilege of violating human beings' dignity and freedom, he doesn't dare ask – even himself – if it's OK or not. He simply acts like everyone else and tries to blend in. As it is, he's got enough problems, and boy is the weekend far off.
You get used to it in a hurry, and many even learn to like it. Where else can you go out on patrol – that is, walk the streets like a king, harass and humiliate pedestrians to your heart's content, and get into mischief with your buddies – and at the same time feel like a big hero defending your country? The Gaza Exploits became heroic tales, a source of pride for Giv'ati, then a relatively new brigade suffering from low self esteem.
For a long time, I could not relate to the whole "heroism" thing. But when, as a sergeant, I found myself in charge, something cracked inside me. Without thinking, I turned into the perfect occupation enforcer. I settled accounts with "upstarts" who didn't show enough respect. I tore up the personal documents of men my father's age. I hit, harassed, served as a bad example – all in the city of Kalkilia, barely three miles from grandma and grandpa's home-sweet-home. No. I was no "aberration." I was exactly the norm.
Having completed my compulsory service, I was discharged, and then the first Intifada began (how many more await us?) Ofer, a comrade in arms who remained in the service has become a hero: the hero of the second Giv'ati trial. He commanded a company that dragged a detained Palestinian demonstrator into a dark orange grove and beat him to death. As the verdict stated, Ofer was found to have been the leader in charge of the whole business. He spent two months in jail and was demoted – I think that was the most severe sentence given an Israeli soldier through the entire first Intifada, in which about a thousand Palestinians were killed. Ofer's battalion commander testified that there was a order from the higher echelons to use beatings as a legitimate method of punishment, thereby implicating himself. On the other hand, Efi Itam, the brigade commander, who had been seen beating Arabs on numerous occasions, denied that he ever gave such an order and consequently was never indicted. Today he lectures us on moral conduct on his way to a new life in politics. (In the current Intifada, incidentally, the vast majority of incidents involving Palestinian deaths are not even investigated. No one even bothers.)
And in the meantime, I was becoming more of a civilian. A copy of The Yellow Wind [a book on life in the Occupied Territories by the Israeli writer David Grossman, available in English –AK] which had just come out, crossed my path. I read it, and suddenly it hit me. I finally understood what I had done over there. What I had been over there.
I began to see that they had cheated me: They raised me to believe there was someone up there taking care of things. Someone who knows stuff that is beyond me, the little guy. And that even if sometimes politicians let us down, the "military echelon" is always on guard, day and night, keeping us safe, each and every one of their decisions the result of sacred necessity. Yes, they cheated us, the soldiers of the Intifadas, exactly as they had cheated the generation that was beaten to a pulp in the War of Attrition and in the Yom Kippur War, exactly as they had cheated the generation that sank deep into the Lebanese mud during the Lebanon invasions. And our parents' generation continues to be silent.
Worse still, I understood that I was raised on two contradictory value systems. I think most people discover even at an earlier age they must choose between two value systems: an abstract, demanding one that is no fun at all and that is very difficult to verify, and another which calls to you from every corner – determining who is up and who is down, who is king and who – pariah, who is one of us and who is our enemy. Contrary to basic common sense, I picked the first. Because in this country the cost-effective analysis comparing one system to another is so lopsided, I can't blame those who choose the second.
I picked the first road, and found myself volunteering in a small, smoke-filled office in East Jerusalem, digging up files about deaths, brutality, bureaucratic viciousness or simply daily harassments. I felt I was atoning, to some extent, for my actions during my days with the Giv'ati brigade. But it also felt as if I was trying to empty the ocean out with a teaspoon.
Out of the blue, I was called up for the very first time for reserve duty in the Occupied Territories. Hysterically, I contacted my company commander. He calmed me down: We will be staying at an outpost overlooking the Jordan river. No contacts with the local population is expected. And that indeed was what I did, but some of my friends provided security for the Damia Bridge terminal [where Palestinians cross from Jordan to Israel and vice versa – AK]. This was in the days preceding the Gulf War and a large number of Palestinian refugees were flowing from Kuwait to the Occupied Territories (from the frying pan into the fire). The reserve soldiers – mostly right wingers – cringed when they saw the female consscripts stationed in the terminal happily ripping open down-comforters and babies' coats to make sure they didn't contain explosives. I too cringed when I heard their stories, but I was also hopeful: reserve soldiers are human after all, whatever their political views.
Such hopes were dashed three years later, when I spent three weeks with a celebrated reconnaissance company in the confiscated ruins of a villa at the outskirts of the Abasans (if you don't know where this is, it's your problem). This is where it became clear to me that the same humane reserve soldier could also be an ugly, wretched macho undergoing a total regression back to his days as a young conscript. Already on the bus ride to the Gaza strip, the soldiers were competing with each other: whose "heroic" tales of murderous beatings during the Intifada were better (in case you missed this point: the beatings were literally murderous: beating to death). Going on patrol duty with these guys once was all that I could take. I went up to the placement officer and requested to be given guard duty only. Placement officers like people like me: most soldiers can't tolerate staying inside the base longer than a couple of hours.
Thus began the nausea and shame routine, a routine that lasted three tours of reserve duty in the Occupied Territories: 1993, 1995, and 1997. The "pale-gray" refusal routine. For several weeks at a time I would turn into a hidden "prisoner of conscience, " guarding an outpost or a godforsaken transmitter on top of some mountain, a recluse. I was ashamed to tell most of my friends why I chose to serve this way. I didn't have the energy to hear them get on my case for being such a "wishy washy" softy. I was also ashamed of myself: This was the easy way out. In short, I was ashamed all over. I did "save my own soul." I was not directly engaged in wrongdoing – only made it possible for others to do so while I kept guard. Why didn't I refuse outright? I don't know. It was partly the pressure to conform, partly the political process that gave us a glimmer of hope that the whole occupation business would be over soon. More than anything, it was my curiosity to see actually what was going on over there.
And precisely because I knew so well, first hand, from years of experience what was going on over there, what reality was like over there, I had no trouble seeing, through the fog of war and the curtain of lies, what has been taking place over there since the very first days of the second Intifada. For years, the army had been feeding on lines like "We were too nice in the first Intifada, " and "If we had only killed a hundred in the very first days, everything would have been different." Now the army was given license to do things its way. I knew full well that [former Prime Minister] Ehud Barak was giving the army free hand, and that [current Chief of Staff] Shaul Mofaz was taking full advantage of this to maximize the bloodshed.
By then, I had two little kids, boys, and I knew from experience that no one – not a single person in the entire world – will ever make sure that my sons won't have to serve in the Occupied Territories when they reach 18. No one, that is, except me. And no one but me will have to look them in the eye when they're all grown up and tell them where dad was when all that happened. It was clear to me: this time I was not going.
Initially, this was a quiet decision, still a little shy, something like "I am just a bit weird, can't go and can't talk about it too much either." But as time went by, as the level of insanity, hatred, and incitement kept rising, as the generals were turning the Israeli Defense Forces into a terror organization, the decision was turning into an outcry: "If you can't see that this is one big crime leading us to the brink of annihilation, then something is terribly wrong with you!"
And then I discovered that I was not alone. Like discovering life on another planet.
The truth is that I understand why everyone is mad at us. We spoiled the neat little order of things. The holy Status Quo states that the Right holds the exclusive rights to celebrate the blood and ask for more. The role of the Left, on the other hand, is to wail while sitting in their armchairs sipping wine and waiting for the Messiah to come and with a single wave of his magic wand make the Right disappear along with the settlers, the Arabs, the weather, and the entire Middle East. That's how the world is supposed to work. So why are you causing such a disturbance? What's your problem? Bad boys!
Woe to you, dear establishment left! You haven't been paying attention! That Messiah has been here already. He waved his magic wand, saw things aren't that simple, was abandoned in the midst of battle, lost altitude, and finally was assassinated, with the rest of us (yes, me too) watching from the comfort of our armchairs. Forget it. A messiah doesn't come around twice! There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Don't you really see what we are doing, why it is that we stepped out of line? Don't you get the difference between a low key, personal refusal and an organized, public one? (And make no mistake about it, the private refusal is the easier choice.) You really don't get it? So let me spell it out for you.
First, we declare our commitment to the first value system. The one that is elusive, abstract, and not profitable. We believe in the moral code generally known as God (and my atheist friends who also signed this letter would have to forgive me – we all believe in God, the true one, not that of the Rabbis and the Ayatollahs). We believe that there is no room for the tribal code, that the tribal code simply camouflages idolatry, an idolatry of a type we should not cooperate with. Those who let such a form of idol worship take over will end up as burnt offerings themselves.
Second, we (as well as some other groups who are even more despised and harassed) are putting our bodies on the line, in the attempt to prevent the next war. The most unnecessary, most idiotic, cruel and immoral war in the history of Israel.
We are the Chinese young man standing in front of the tank. And you? If you are nowhere to be seen, you are probably inside the tank, advising the driver.

Avi Blum:

First Scene – On the Road to Ein Beit Ilma

The reconnaissance jeep moves on the road, trying to maneuver between forgotten ‘ninjas' [spikes scattered on roads to puncture tires of military vehicles] from last night, and plain old potholes. Across the road, on the electric line hanging in lazy negligence, so common to the Occupied Territories, waved in the early spring breeze a Palestinian flag. Underneath, the regiment commander's jeep was already waiting, with the chubby regiment commander himself spread-eagled on the hood, enjoying the sun. "Are you from the new battalion? You arrived only yesterday, right? Who's the patrol commander? You? Catch a local and ask him to burn – I emphasize, burn! The flag", said the regiment commander to me. "Just take his ID card, and when I'm back, I don't want to see that flag again." The regiment commander's jeep drove east to the outskirts of the city, and left us, three reserve soldiers, at the start of a mission…
It wasn't hard to ‘catch' a local and his friend, who after about an hour of pondering how to take off the flag without risking their lives, found a long wooden pole and whisked the flag away. "Burn it", I commanded, but they ignored me. "You heard me? Burn it!" Quickly the flag was given to me. "Would you burn the Israeli flag?" One of the asked me in Hebrew, and I, embarrassed, remained there with what used to be a Palestinian flag. Without words and with a great shame, I gave them back their ID cards and we continued on our way.
We met the regiment commander in his jeep at the center of Nablus, near the Clock Square. "Sir – mission accomplished", I quipped, "and here's the proof" – the rag that once was a flag was delivered to the regiment commander's shocked hands. On the same evening I was told that I'm being removed from my role as patrol commander for showing "disrespect" to the Nablus regiment commander.

Second Scene – El-Itihad Hospital, Nablus

"Anyone knows where El-Itihad hospital is?" Avner the company commander entered the reconnaissance platoon's tent. We didn't exactly answer. "Never mind", said Avner, "You must get there right away with the [military] doctor. We've received reports about a gunshot-wounded young man who arrived there, and he might be wanted."
We descended from our camp overlooking the town, and crossed this town full of horrors. It was early evening and we honked wildly to scare all vehicles off our way. At Jebel Shimali neighborhood on the slopes of Mount Eival, we were greeted with showers of stones and bottles. The large military escort entered the hospital compound with the doctor after a short negotiation. I, wearing a helmet and holding a gun, think about other sick visits at other times and places.
It is the most absolute contradiction – a hospital, the humane antithesis to our guns, helmets and flak jackets (worn in case some patient attacks us). The miserable supper served to the patients afterwards, the Palestinian doctor wearing a nozzle, the wounded man found and interrogated in his bloody bed – only so that we could learn that he was shot by settlers passing through the town, the amazing green eyes of a nurse with flowing black hair, who looked at us with burning hate. I feel an awesome nausea. Unable to hold it back, I throw up and cry outside the hospital walls. During the remainder of this service, each time I looked through the observation binoculars at the slopes of Mount Eival and saw the hospital's neon lights, I felt a shudder down my spine.
Two days after this visit, our comrade Benny Meissner R.I.P. was killed in the Nablus Qasbah.

The declaration and the two statements are taken from the refusenik website Courage to Refuse - Combatant's Letter
Further information on refusal to serve can be found under
http://www.yesh-gvul.org and http://www.newprofile.org

3. August 2002

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