(AFP) - On December 26, Israel's first conscientious objector since the start of its war against Hamas, Tal Mitnick, was sent to prison after refusing to serve in the army. Mitnick, however, is not alone. A small group of Israelis are refusing to take part in the "oppression of the Palestinians" by refusing to serve in the Gaza conflict. FRANCE 24 met with some of them in Israel.
Young people refusing to serve in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are known as "refuseniks" in Israel. The term dates from the Soviet era and once referred to Jews denied the right to emigrate to Israel from the Soviet bloc.
Although military service in the Jewish state is compulsory for both men and women – with many seeing it as an important part of their national identity – the refuseniks are increasingly speaking out.
“On February 25th (my enlistment date) ... I will refuse to enlist and go to military jail for it,” Sofia Orr, an 18-year-old Israeli woman, told FRANCE 24 in the Pardes Hanna-Karkur municipality of the Haifa district.
“I refuse to take part in the violent policies of oppression and apartheid that Israel enacted upon the Palestinian people, and especially now with the war,” Orr said in English. “I want to fight to convey the message that there is no military solution to a political problem, and that is more apparent than ever now. And I want to be part of the solution and not the problem.”
Orr’s words echo those of her friend Tal Mitnick, the jailed 18-year-old who was sentenced on January 2 to 30 days in prison by a military court.
In a statement published on social media before his incarceration, Mitnick said that a lasting solution will not come from the army. “Violence cannot solve the situation – neither by Hamas, nor by Israel. There is no military solution to a political problem. Therefore, I refuse to enlist in an army that believes that the real problem can be ignored, under a government that only continues the bereavement and pain.”
Full statement from Tal Mitnick, the Israeli 18-year-old sentenced to prison for refusing to enlist: "I do not want to take part in the continuation of the oppression and the continuation of the cycle of bloodshed, but to work directly for a solution, and therefore I refuse." pic.twitter.com/TbkCTAPieR
— Prem Thakker (@prem_thakker) December 26, 2023
"I'm very proud of him (Mitnick) and also inspired by his courage,” Orr said. “Everyone has different beliefs. But in the general sense, yes, I absolutely stand behind his open letter and behind his stand.”
She said the political situation in Israel has made it harder than ever to conscientiously object.
“Right now, it's more difficult than ever to refuse and to take this stand, because the political environment in Israel has gotten way tougher since the war started. There has been a strong shift to the right, and the entire political sphere has become a lot more violent and aggressive,” Orr said.
The Israeli army relies almost exclusively on reservists. Men are required to enlist for 32 months and women for 24, after which they can be mobilised until their 40th and 38th birthdays, respectively.
Following Hamas’s surprise attacks on October 7 that left more than 1,100 Israelis dead, the army mobilised more than 360,000 reservists, about 4 percent of the country’s population of 9.8 million, representing Israel’s largest mobilisation since the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
'A politically motivated decision'
Orr, who describes herself as an “activist” and a "political person", said it was already clear to her that she would conscientiously object at the age of 15. And she has not wavered since.
“The 7th of October changed nothing in either direction,” she said. “It should have been expected, because when you put people under extreme violence, extreme violence will rise back at you. It's inevitable.”
She said the attacks in southern Israel “only made me surer in my decision”.
“Since the war started, and the horrible violence that is enacted on the Gazans in Gaza and the destruction of the whole place, it made me surer that we must fight for a different option and that this will never solve anything. And that I have to resist this cycle of bloodshed or it will never end,” Orr said.
The Israeli army rarely accepts refusals to enlist on grounds of pacifism or ethics.
Apart from the ultra-Orthodox and Israeli Arabs, who are automatically exempt from military service, only young Israelis suffering from physical or mental problems can be declared unfit after a medical examination.
Exemption was, however, out of the question for Orr.
“I choose to be part of the rare few who do have political motivations behind [not serving] … more than that, [who] choose to make it public [as] a public statement and a political statement,” she said. Orr chooses “to resist” and to do so publicly, “to raise awareness for the situation as a whole”.
With the support of her parents and sister, Orr is convinced that she can make a difference.
When a classmate rallied to her cause, Orr said, it “made me believe that I can change things, and that as small an impact that I have, it's still an impact and it's still worth it”.
Violence only leads to more violence
Seeking to bring the plight of Palestinians to public attention in Israel, Orr travelled to the West Bank to meet Palestinians.
“I went to the West Bank and talked to settlers, and then went and talked to Palestinians. And I think it's an important experience, to see for yourself … how the settlers live and how the Palestinians live, what the settlers say and what the Palestinians say,” Orr said.
"We've seen for the past 70 years that the military using military means leads us nowhere. The only progress we've ever made on this piece of land has been by political means and negotiations and trying to make peace. So again, there is no military solution to a political problem. And this problem is both political and humanitarian. And the military does not solve either of those things,” she said.
Surprisingly mature and filled with conviction, Orr has stuck by her words and refused to abandon her beliefs even though talk of peace in Israel has mostly been silenced since the October 7 massacres.
“Israel's attempts to eradicate Hamas is only making Hamas stronger, because if you offer no alternative to the Palestinians and they think that violent resistance is the only way … and [if they think] it's the only language that Israel knows how to speak and … their only chance at freedom … Then, yes, of course they will join Hamas and try violent resistance,” Orr said.
The violence wrought by Hamas was also counter-productive, she said. “I don't think that the horrible attack on October 7 made any progress for the Palestinian cause.”
But Israel’s war on Gaza pushes any hopes for a solution farther away.
“I will never justify what Israel does right now in Gaza. Violence only leads to more violence. So I think the only way to really weaken the violent resistance is to offer an alternative. And that has to come from inside Israel, and that has to come from Israel, because Israel is a much stronger side in the equation,” Orr said, adding that both Israelis and Palestinians should try to make peace amid the increasingly brutal Gaza war.
“It’s the only viable solution.”
While Orr’s words have, for the most part, fallen on deaf ears in Israel, some have resorted to calling her a “traitor” and a “self-hating Jew” while others even threatened to murder or rape her.
Orr said she has also suffered other consequences of her choice to go public, whether while job hunting or in the social sphere.
“People aren't supposed to ask if you went to the army – and definitely not why you didn't, if you didn't,” she said. But of someone Googles her, her decision not to serve comes up.
“It can have consequences,” she acknowledged. “The biggest consequences are social because it's a very militaristic society, and I'm very publicly not a militaristic person ... but I believe that it's worth it no matter what ... I will endure [the consequences].”
When asked if she's afraid of going to prison, Orr, who planned on studying literature after serving her sentence, didn’t equivocate. “It's scary. I know it will be hard ... but it’s part of the whole thing. I've made peace with it long ago.”
Avital Rubin, a young Israeli, has already served a total of four months in prison. Then 19, Rubin was sentenced for refusing military service in 2021.
Quietly seated on the terrace of a café in Haifa, Rubin said he was born into a family that he described as "dovish Zionist" – both liberal and conciliatory in their attitude.
“I remember as a kid, my mother bought me these mini biographies of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. And I always viewed these people as heroes. But the moment [Donald] Trump won, there was this shift on the internet and it all of a sudden became much more right-winged or much more bigoted, homophobic, sexist. And so I had to find places that I felt comfortable being ... I had to [find] more and more leftist places,” Rubin said.
Rubin, who currently works in IT, educated himself by watching videos of Noam Chomsky and calls himself "anti-Zionist".
Rubin took part in 2021 demonstrations by Jews and Arabs in Sheikh Jarrah, a neighbourhood in East Jerusalem that has been the centre of a heavy legal battle over the past 20 years between Palestinian families and Israeli settlers.
Without knowing how to exempt himself from military service, Rubin hesitated on whether to enlist.
‘Each time, the solution is to bomb Gaza’
Rubin was introduced to a member of Mesarvot – "Those who refuse" in Hebrew – at one of the group’s gatherings.
The NGO informs and advises young people without necessarily discouraging them from joining the army.
Like Mitnick and Orr, Rubin saw that it was possible to refuse military service on political grounds.
Mesarvot provided him with legal support and even visited him in prison.
"I'm happy I didn't do it (military service) and I refused. Not because I'm a pacifist, but because I always grew up viewing the occupation and the Nakba (“Catastrophe” in Arabic; Nakba refers to the forced exodus of Palestinians in 1948) with disgust. And so to be part of the IDF would be to be part of this thing. And I think that is what, more than anything, pushed me away from enlisting in the military,” Rubin said.
While clearly disapproving of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, Rubin admitted to having discovered the realities of the West Bank only when he was 16.
"When I was in prison, and I told people I'm refusing because of the occupation ... they were like, 'what is the occupation?' I said, you know, over the Green Line (the pre-1967 border from before the Six-Day War). And they were like, what is the Green Line? Honestly, I didn't blame them because three years prior to that, I didn't know what the Green Line was either,” he said.
Rubin has since chosen to isolate himself, likening his isolation to the mark of Cain, a visible mark placed by the Abrahamic God on the biblical figure Cain's forehead, so that others would recognise him as the murderer of his brother Abel.
This self-isolation has allowed Rubin to distance himself from the Nakba and Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories.
“The only thing I actually sacrificed was an easy job because, if I enlisted, I would have gone to some intelligence [unit], done like three years – maybe signed for an extra two years – then I would have left and found some cushy job in high tech and gotten paid like six figures for doing nothing. Which is basically what all my high school friends are going to do,” he said.
Rubin said his family and friends didn't try to persuade him otherwise, as they saw that he stood by his convictions, which remained unchanged even after the October 7 attacks.
“Israel has this spectacular capability of never learning from anything. It's like, for 100 years, we've been bombing and murdering and occupying, and then a massacre happens, and then we bomb and occupy and kill. Then a massacre happens. But every time something happens, the solution is to bomb Gaza. This time it will work. This time it will be different ... And that's what people say,” Rubin said.
“[The PLO] committed acts of terror and massacres, but ultimately they wanted, at the beginning, a one-state secular democratic solution, then a two-state solution. And then, in the 80s, Israel didn't want to deal with the PLO. So we invaded Lebanon to try to push PLO [out] and instead we got Hezbollah, which is like a million times worse. And then Israel didn't want to deal with the PLO in the occupied territories in Gaza. So it helped raise Hamas, which is a million times worse ... The history of Israel is just like [a series of] military solutions that just make the situation worse time and time and time again,” he said.
When asked about the future, Rubin didn’t attempt to hide his pessimism.
“I think the situation is going to become noticeably worse. Israel is in a death spiral ... There's no room left for personal agency in Israel. I feel it has all been determined by by the currents of history. The same way that the earth revolves around the sun and slowly sinks into it – the same way that Israel cannot help but fulfill its historic destiny,” Rubin said, adding that even a change in premiership wouldn’t bring about a significant change in Israel.
“It doesn't matter who is the next prime minister – who will it be? Probably [Israeli opposition leader Yair] Lapid or no, probably Benny Gantz most likely,” referring to the MP and onetime challenger to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
“But it doesn't matter. He's the same as Binyamin Netanyahu,” he said.
Despite his pessimistic outlook, Rubin said he would remain in Israel.
Citing Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist who saved hundreds of Jews from Nazi extermination camps, Rubin said he hoped to sacrifice himself in some way to save others.
“That's the most heroic thing a man can do. The most correct thing a man can do. And that's what matters for me most. And there's no other place in the world where I can actually do it, other than Israel. So I will. My place will always be here,” he said.