Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Hidden Article

This posting has been hidden because it breaches the Indymedia UK (IMC UK) Editorial Guidelines.

IMC UK is an interactive site offering inclusive participation. All postings to the open publishing newswire are the responsibility of the individual authors and not of IMC UK. Although IMC UK volunteers attempt to ensure accuracy of the newswire, they take no responsibility legal or otherwise for the contents of the open publishing site. Mention of external web sites or services is for information purposes only and constitutes neither an endorsement nor a recommendation.

Why Israel's 'seruvniks' say enough is enough

pasted from The Observer | 20.05.2002 10:19

The laywer representing Israeli conscripts who refuse to serve beyond the 1967 ceasefire lines explains why a growing number of soldiers are disobeying orders, in order to protect the basic values on which Israel was founded.

Observer Worldview

Michael Sfard
Sunday May 19, 2002

It is said that in the first few years of the Israeli occupation of the
West Bank and Gaza Strip, no one seriously thought of holding on to these
territories forever. It was at the time widely assumed, that these newly
conquered lands were to be handed back to the Arabs as part of a peace
agreement. I don't remember those days.
I was raised in a different Israel. In my Israel the small fundamentalist
group of Jewish settlers has always enjoyed more political power than
their relative share in the Israeli population. In my Israel both
left-wing and right-wing governments enabled the colonialisation of these
occupied Palestinian lands. My Israel paid, and is still paying, a heavy
moral price for ruling another nation by the force of the sword. My
Israel, built on the founding values of humanism, pluralism and democracy
is being lost.

Three months ago an unprecedented petition by reserve soldiers was
published in the Israeli press. The signatories declared their intention
to refuse to serve the Israeli occupation and disobey any order to go, as
soldiers, beyond the 1967 ceasefire lines. The number of signatories
(known as 'seruvniks' for the Hebrew word 'seruv' - refusal) has increased
rapidly from 50 in the first petition to 462 as of today. Though refusal
in Israel was not uncommon, the scale of this petition is a novelty. Most
of the signatories are hardened combat officers and soldiers, and all of
them served many years in the occupied territories. Since the launch of
the petition, about forty of those who have endorsed the petition have
been sent to military prisons as a result of their refusal.

Almost all of the 462 who have signed, among them myself, are between
twenty-five and thirty-five years old. None of us can remember a
non-occupying Israel. Each and every signatory of the petition has
individually reached the decision to spurn the state's demand that they
will employ immoral and inhumane means of control over civilian
population. And yet, I was amazed to discover how similar our stories are.
How identical our personal transitions from being "good" and obedient
soldiers to what our Attornty General described as "dangerous outlaws"
have been.

As the legal adviser to many seruvniks - and someone who was incarcerated
for three weeks for refusing to serve in the Hebron area a few years ago -
I have had the privilege of escorting many of my fellow signatories from
receipt of their call up papers, through the trial and, finally, visiting
them in prison. Given their biographies, the act of refusal was by no
means a natural decision. Rather, it was rather the product of a personal
crisis, born out of moral agonies and a sense of deep concern for our
country's future.

One might expect to hear horrifying stories of atrocities that the
objectors witnessed before making their decision to no longer take part in
the system. The truth of the matter is that most of the conscientious
objectors reached their decision simply from experiencing "everyday" life
in the occupied territories.

The occupation corrupted Israeli culture, it eroded our code of ethics,
and it even contaminated the Hebrew language. In the name of the fight
against the murderous and unforgivable terror that struck Israeli cities
and towns, we grew accustomed to manning check-points in which thousands
of Palestinians are being detained for hours and humiliated by young
soldiers. We grew accustomed to pointing our rifles at children and women.
We became tolerant to large-scale demolition of houses ('surface
uncovering' in military jargon). Finally, we accepted a state-sponsored
policy of assassinations, neatly labelled by Israeli spokesmen as "focused
prevention". We learned how to distinguish between roads for settlers
(Jews) and roads for 'locals' (Palestinians), and we were asked to
implement discriminatory laws for the sake of the illegal settlements that
have trapped our country in an endless messianic war. A war which the vast
majority of Israelis never wanted.

As soldiers who witnessed, first-hand, the corrosive effect of the
occupation on ordinary Israelis and Palestinians we could no longer bear
its destructive implications for what we were raised to believe were
Israeli values - respect for human life and dignity. The occupation
chiselled out unequal relations between Palestinians and Israelis. It
planted in many a seed of racism against Arabs.

Under such circumstances, hundreds of officers and soldiers who were
always in the forefront of IDF's most prestigious units, who were used to
risking their lives for the security of the State of Israel, began
questioning both the morality of our presence in the occupied territories
and the myth of its necessity. People who have no legal background grew to
acknowledge that the command that sends them beyond the borders of
democracy to rule another people inherently produces systematic human
rights abuses and is therefore neither democratic nor legal.

Entering a village and arresting every male above the age of 14 for up to
18 days, as was done in the recent incursion to the West Bank, is inhuman,
even if the mission is to find terrorists. Stopping an ambulance that
carries a sick man or a pregnant woman is immoral even if you suspect that
it also carries hidden weapons. And that is the tragedy of serving in the
occupied territories: one cannot go there without detaining suspected
ambulances and treating children in a manner that results in more hatred.
The soldiers are placed in an impossible situation, coerced by the
occupation's reality to act immorally.

As a lawyer I am allowed to visit these prisoners of conscience. Some
arrive in prison filled with pride. Others are shocked by their own deed,
and try to explain themselves to their families and friends in long
telephone conversations. In prison, most of them discover how angry they
are. Angry at the settlers that tangled us in a never-ending war.
Indignant at the governments of Israel that enabled them to do so. Vexed
at the Israeli Defence Force, which arrogantly took for granted that we
would carry out any order.

The seruvniks come from the backbone of Israeli society. They were always
seen by themselves and by others, as Israelis from the mainstream of our
civic life. "I took seriously the values I was brought up on in this
country", they tell me. We must now ask ourselves whether this was always
simply rhetoric, or whether Israel has fundamentally changed. As
seruvniks, we have chosen to speak out. To silence our voice would be to
marginalise further the basic values upon which our country was founded.

ú Michael Sfard is a lawyer practising human rights and criminal law in
Tel-Aviv. You can read the seruvniks' petition - Courage to refuse - here
( http://www.seruv.org.il/defaulteng.asp), and you can write to the author
of this piece at  legal@seruv.org.il.

pasted from The Observer
- e-mail: legal@seruv.org.il

Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech