About six months after Israel’s attorney general publicly announced an effort to criminalise dissent, state authorities have upped the ante in their “war” – as the daily Ha’aretz called it last September – against Israel’s youth and against the broad, grassroots protest movement of young Israelis who avoid serving their compulsory time in the military – slandered by officials as “draft shirkers”.
On 26 April, a day before Israel’s Memorial Day, Israeli police produced an absurd piece of political theatre – as Dimi Reider first reported here last Thursday. As if facing down dangerous organised criminals, they raided the homes of six activists in different parts of Israel, who were then detained for interrogation. Exploiting the emotions roused on a day of mourning for military dead, the police action singled out and branded anti-military activists as outside the legitimate Israeli community.
At the time of writing, police have summoned 10 additional activists for interrogation. The activists targeted are members of New Profile, a feminist movement working for over a decade to reverse the militarisation of state and society in Israel. I have been a member since its inception. New Profile intends to uphold the right to open discourse on the crucial issues young people face and we work to change the militarised thinking holding us, all the residents of Israel and Palestine, hostage. Our activism may enrage some, but our activities are totally legal.
The reality is that rising numbers of young Jewish Israelis – as well as the Druze minority who are also subject to conscription – find themselves unwilling to accept the Israeli dictate “There’s no other choice”. Four generations and over six decades of failed “military solutions” have engendered a broad social movement of young people who have severe internal struggles when asked to serve in the military.
Israeli law offers virtually no legal provision for conscientious objectors and Israel’s courts – both military and civil – class the reason for refusing service as “political”, “psychological” and only very rarely “conscientious”. The soul-searching brought on by deciding to serve has caused many young people real distress. In recent years, Israeli soldiers’ suicides have accounted for more deaths than all the other types of military casualties combined.
