Nave Shabtay Levin

I held a gun in my hands before I was 10 years old. 

You could say I was raised in the Israeli army, or at least in the spirit of the Israeli Army. My father, who was a military officer during most of my childhood, took my sister and me to his military base on weekends. There I held a gun, entered tanks, and collected gun bullets lying on the ground. As a child, that was cool! I also grew up without a grandfather. From very early on, on every national Memorial Day, I would skip the school ceremony to attend the grave of my grandfather who was killed in the 1973 war (The Yom Kippur War). I was nurtured on the glory of the army and  on war-related bereavement. 

But as the years went by, I became more aware, and I started to attend demonstrations against the occupation with my mother. When I was at high school we started visiting Sheikh Jarrah, where I met families that stood to lose all they had, and to end up in the streets with their children as a result of the Jerusalem municipality campaign, jointly with the settlers to empty Jerusalem of Palestinians. Among other things, I saw a fence that settlers had build through a private Palestinian backyard, and the police who were securing it, prevening all from entering, until we ourselves yanked it from the ground. In Sheikh Jarrah, the police stopped and interrogated me for the sole reason that I had a Palestinian flag. Almost weekly, police violently seize flags from the protestors. 

Although I was raised in a militaristic family, where the army was a sacred cow, and although I was told in school that soldiers are heroes, I never wanted to enlist in the army. My unwillingness to enlist, was transformed over the years to the act of active refusal of the draft and the more I realized what soldiers really do. I realized that there is an entire system, military, economic and ideological, whose task is to preserve the occupation and the oppression of the Palestinians.

This year, during the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, tens of masked settlers went to Masafer Yatta, threw stones at the Palestinian residents, at their children and at their houses. Windshields were smashed, and many people injured, including a three-year-old child who was injured in his head. This event was not unique. It was just one more day in the violent reality that the population in Masafer Yatta endure, where attacks by settlers are a daily occurrence.  

And where is the army in this story? The same one I was expected to enlist in? Where are the heroic soldiers that we hear of? In almost every violent incident perpetrated by settlers the army, under the best of circumstances, does nothing. More frequently, however, it enables, supports and even provides weapons and backup to the settlers. This is the occupation – this violence is not a bug, it is a feature. The state, the army, and the settlers have the same purpose – in Masaffer Yatta and throughout the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories:  the creation of territorial continuity in Israeli control that cuts the West Bank into pieces. These aims – territorial control and the removal of the Palestinians – has led to the biggest population transfer since 1967, taking place as we speak in Masafer Yatta. The army and the settlers are equal partners in this project.

The occupation and the oppression of the Palestinians are closely linked to Israeli capitalism. For the Israeli elites, the occupation is profitable. Israeli Weapon companies make millions from selling weapons to regimes such as Yemen and the United Arabs Emirates. Weapons that are sold after they were tried on Gaza and the West Bank – and are promoted by the misery, the poverty, and the death that it had created. As well, the occupation is profitable  – as a device to abuse Palestinian workers. Israeli corporations and wealthy people employ Palestinians both, in the occupied territories and inside Israel, and abuse them with long working hours and low salaries, taking advantage of the fact that the Palestinians have no way to secure their rights. In that way the rich profit directly from the oppression of the Palestinians people. 

The narrative of the country perpetuated through the educational system provides a narrow colonialist view on history and on the reality in the state of Israel. It tells us that the country was built by heroic pioneers, without ever discussing what and who was here before. It tells us about villages and cities that were built, but not how Palestinian lands were bought and their inhabitants banished. It creates a false unity of Jewish interests with the Jewish rich, rather than with the Palestinians. It tries to make us think that the occupation benefits us, the Jewish workers, in order to eliminate any possibility of true solidarity with the Palestinians or bringing an end to the occupation – all of which stands to hurt in their pocket. 

We live in a country that call itself self enlightened and liberal, "the only democracy in the middle east", but at the same time, runs a murderous apartheid regime and commits war crimes regularly and systematically. Israel implements policies of house demolitions, journalists’ killings, of breaking into homes, mass arrests, the arrest of children, collective punishments; illegal settlements, a siege on Gaza and much more on a daily basis. This country exploits our personal loss and pain over the people we loved and who died because of this cruel reality, to further its propaganda.

As humans we must resist this reality. As humans we must refuse to demolish homes, arrest children, and refuse the destructive reality that Palestinians live in. As humans we must make amends for the wrongs of the past of the occupation and the Nakba.

As workers we must show solidarity and cooperation with Palestinian workers, and fight against the rich that profit from our exploitation.

As potential army inductees, this is our opportunity not only to serve the country and the army. It is our opportunity to support the fight for justice, peace, and equality. Whether through psychological disqualification, by appealing to the army’s conscientious objection’s committee or through serving jail sentences, we refuse to serve in the occupation army. We must fight for a better future. It will not be easy. Our opponents are strong. However, where there is oppression, there is also brotherhood and solidarity, and that no one can take from us.

In solidarity,

Nave