In Israel, where army service is holy, the mass protest movement has prompted soul-searching about refusing service too - Haaretz

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For the right and left, army service in Israel has gone unquestioned. But as protests swell against the far-right government’s attempted power grab, some are seeing there’s strength not only in enlisting, but resisting

In recent weeks, as opposition to the government and the judicial overhaul intensified, a growing number of reservists – from the elite fighter pilot squad to members of intelligence units, military doctors and general reservists – have been threatening they will refuse to report to duty in protest of the current Netanyahu government’s attempts to undermine democratic rule in Israel.

Netanyahu called this unprecedented action an “existential threat.” Shlomi Karhi, his communication minister, blasted them with words never before heard by officials regarding the country’s vaunted military, saying those refusing service could “go to hell. We’ll manage without you.”

While those threatening to break rank haven’t been put to the test, the number of young people starting their mandatory service hasn’t decreased, and politicians are trying to dismiss this trend, saying the number of dissenters is negligible, the scope and volume of this these calls is unprecedented.

The IDF chief of staff himself, Herzl Halevi, sounds genuinely alarmed by the swelling number of “refuseniks.” He warned the army can’t operate without them.

Israelis disagree on many things, but when it comes to “security matters,” we all fall in line, don’t question; we obey. Any criticism, any call to dissent, is answered with a Pavlovian response from right to left.

This is because the mainstream has seen the IDF as an institution that unifies all sectors of society, a symbol borne out of the collective ashes of the Holocaust and its cautionary message that Jews must be able to defend themselves.

Ours is “the most moral army in the world” we are told. Going into the army at 18, as conscripts, is an unshakable rite of passage in the life cycle of Jewish Israelis.

Yes, there has always been a streak of periodic dissent in Israel: soldiers who refused to serve in Lebanon, others who refused to serve in the West Bank, pilots who wrote an open letter stating they won’t carry out illegal acts, and every year a handful of teenagers say they rather sit in jail as conscientious objectors than serve in an occupying army.

But these are the miniscule exception to the rule and most come from elite backgrounds.

This trend of refusal we are seeing is different. These people can’t be disregarded as a fifth column, “anarchists, or “draft dodgers.” They are from the mainstream of society, consider themselves the salt of the earth, and believe in the ethos of Israel.

As one active-duty soldier wrote, he’s calling to refuse service “Not because we are not Zionists, but precisely because we are Zionists, patriots and lovers of this land.”

The impetus isn’t so much in overthrowing the current system, but a total lack of trust in the sitting regime.

They see their former commanders who have become craven politicians; far-right ministers like Bezalel Smotrich who have called on their community not to serve because of the integration of women in the army but are calling the shots in the West Bank.

It has come to the point where everyday citizens have stopped believing the people who control the army have their best interests in mind – that they won't send them into harm’s way – or even expose them to criminal charges abroad – just so they can get out their personal woes.

This populist, mostly leaderless uprising has given people the reference and the vocabulary to express opposition to a system that has grown more corrupt, more violent and more unequal.

After decades of an ideological vacuum on the left following late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination and the failure of the Oslo Peace Accords – the differences between the two camps is clear again, especially when someone who incited Rabin’s assassination is sitting in the security cabinet.

Under the most right-wing, religious, nationalist government Israel ever had, many people have realized there’s strength not only in enlisting, but also in resisting.

Their actions raise questions that have never been widely discussed: What do we condone by sending our sons and daughters to the military? And more fundamentally: Who are we serving? And what are we protecting?

This is the incredible achievement of the protest so far.

For the first time, the red lines people are not willing to cross are publicly stated: it’s legitimate to refuse service when leaders call to refuse service to members of the LGBTQ community. It’s legitimate to not obey when Smotrich, the minister who oversees West Bank settlements backs those who throw stones at soldiers and dares to say an entire Palestinian village should be wiped out.

Make no mistake: even though these protestors are part and parcel of the system that’s preserving the occupation, even though they’re not pacificists—they are conscientious objectors.

Their defiance provides an opening for a new civil discourse in which criticizing the most hallowed Israeli institution is not only legitimate, but central to any movement going forward.

That’s because rethinking army service necessarily requires a rethinking of the values of Israeli society as a whole.

Can we advocate defense for minorities when 18-year-olds are shipped to protect settlers who perform pogroms?

Can we talk about freedom of the press when the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh is covered up?

If society is built on the ethos of “the people build the army, and the army builds the Nation,” then the protests give us pause to ask: are the people helping build an army whose sole purpose is to sustain the settlement project, to enshrine Jewish supremacy from the river to the sea?

Judging by the comments by Halevi, the IDF chief of staff, who said if the judiciary coup succeeds that “A secure dictatorship is preferable to an unprotected anarchy” – who under public pressure has since backtracked his comment – the answer is yes. And if that’s so, are the people effectively building a nation that has lost its raison d'etre?

Even though most Israelis aren’t card-carrying members of Breaking the Silence, a growing number are beginning to see the army's actions not as necessary actions to safeguard citizens, but as a catalyst that brings more blood to the streets of Israel: An operation in Nablus begets a shooting in Jerusalem; one in Jenin begets a deadly one in Tel Aviv.

Moreover, people are starting to see the connection between the pogrom that took place in Hawara and the attempt to silence the Supreme Court in Jerusalem. Long gone is the era when the IDF censor had total control of information and images.

In the age of social media, people see the absurdity in full view: an army so advanced it can hit far into enemy lines under the stealth of night yet so ham-fisted it sends soldiers to rip down flags in broad daylight; an army that’s supposed to defend Israelis from the threat of terror but whose soldiers dance with settlers in the middle of burned, shuttered Hawara; an army whose ethos is built on tales of sacrifice and glory, but in reality one where more soldiers are killed by suicide than on the battlefield. 

For the first time in its existence, a dissent movement in Israel can take root: not only from a high-minded ideological framework of anti-occupation or pacifism, but also from a populist standpoint, in which the institution that carries so much unspoken political weight can finally become politicized.

There are some ideological purists who scoff at the reservists, saying that they just want to reinstate the status quo, that with the occupation and lack of separation between church and state and executive and judiciary, “democracy” is just a word meant to whitewash what they believe Israel already is – a colonial autocracy with a Western veneer.

Yet, as tenuous and weak as democracy is in Israel, there are still democratic institutions that could be reformed under a brave regime – or ransacked by a corrupt, zealous one.

There are points in history where society goes beyond the tipping point, where it can’t be reformed. A crumbling house can be rebuilt with stronger foundations; one that’s burned to the ground cannot.

The army turns 18-year-olds and reservists into its property; those who refuse service show there’s another choice – to stay human, to show there’s another path to standing up for your society that does not include putting on a uniform.

In Israel, where there’s mandatory conscription, the military agenda is the public agenda. Effective resistance requires disrupting one or both. It comes with a huge toll: denunciation, exclusion and demonization. However, there’s a higher price to cooperating with a regime that has lost its moral mandate and is threatening the most vulnerable people in society and the most basic rights.

In close-knit societies like Israel, we have been told that what defines good citizens are the duties they’re willing to accept.

But sometimes, we are defined by what we reject.