Israel

Marwan Darweish

On 28 September 2001 the Palestinians commemorated the first anniversary of the second Intifada with more people killed and injured adding to the already hundreds of deaths and the thousands injured during this year.

The characteristic of this Intifada in contrast with previous Palestinian confrontations with the Israeli occupation is the extraordinarily high number of civilian casualties within both the Palestinian and Israeli societies. This was due to an excessive use of violence during the first year of this Intifada.

CO activist Sergeiy Sandler reports on the rising tide of objection to military service in Israel during the second intifada.

Thirty-two people is a small number. A demonstration with thirty-two participants would hardly be worthy of the word. But since October 2000, thirty-two people were imprisoned or otherwise penalised in Israel for refusing to perform military duty on conscientious and political grounds.

Andrew Rigby

When Osama Bin Laden threatens that there will be no security for the USA until "we live it and see it in Palestine" he is striking a chord that resonates throughout the Arab (and Muslim) world.

Shalom,

My name is Yair Halper and I am a conscientious objector to military service. On Wednesday the 17 October 2001, I will be incarcerated for my beliefs.

I consider myself a pacifist, and I am using that word only for the lack of a better one. I am only 18, still a child (at least in my eyes). I keep asking myself what the hell do I know about pacifism? My beliefs were never really tested.

The coming Sunday, on 12 August 2001, I will probably be imprisoned in military prison because I refuse to be conscripted to the Israeli army, as doing so would oppose my conscience.

I was born and raised in South Africa during the Apartheid regime. The repression of the blacks which I witnessed during that period, became a basis for my human and non-violent ideals today.

Today, after 8 years of living in Israel and studying Israeli history I have come to realise that the Israeli army practices inhumane and violent tactics on its way to peace.

There's a big math test soon. I'm going over to my tutor's by bus. On my way, I hear the news on the radio. There was a suicide attack in Haifa. In Haifa?! Of all places, in Haifa?? But there are never suicide attacks here. And it was near the mall. Everybody in my school go to that mall. And on the beginning of the holiday... quick, phoning all my friends. Everybody's alright. Relief. It's okay to study math. I arrived at my tutor's. After I finished, my father called me and offered to drive me home. Afternoon. I'm home alone with my little brother. And then Efrat calls. "Remember Adi?

President Milosevic of Yugoslavia has engaged in ruthless oppression of the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. This must be halted.

The bombings by NATO forces must also be halted. They are cruel, immoral, and engender even greater violence. War cannot be resolved by waging yet another war.

We, Jewish and Palestinian women, all Israeli, all too familiar with the ways of war, demand an end to the use of violence as a legitimate tool. Those who profit from war are politicians and weapons manufacturers.

Let us not lend our hand to this unconscionable act.

Lotahn wrote from prison,
"Ideas and morals cannot be locked in a prison. Aspirations for justice cannot be silenced or put behind bars. I was put in jail for fighting for justice, but imprisoning me cannot imprison the universal fight for a world where immoralities are not regarded as painful but necessary realities, where men are not sent off to kill or be killed in wasteful wars forced upon them, a world where greed does not control human existence nor detract us from what is right.

CCPR/C/79/Add.93
18 August 1998

(...)

21/04/1998 1 Conscription

conscription exists

Conscription exists since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The present legal basis of conscription is the 1986 National Defence Service Law.

military service

All Jewish and Druze men and all Jewish women are liable for military service between the ages of 17 and 50. [1]

Military service lasts for three years in the case of men, and two years in the case of women. It lasts longer for officers and certain specialists, such as doctors and nurses.

Mordechai Vanunu has spent 10 years, all in solitary confinement, of an 18-year sentence for revealing datails of larael's nuclear weapons programme to theSundeyThnes in 1986.

The Israeli army used to be venerated -a symbol and a source of national unity. Against the background of his personal transformation from would-be war hero to resister, Adam Keller traces its decline.