Gideon Levy: IDF draft
dodgers are heroes, not criminals
By
Gideon Levy - HAARETZ
4 May 2009
Yitzhak Laor, our best protest poet, may soon face
arrest. On Independence Day eve he published a poem in Haaretz's
literary supplement with the lines: "Perhaps shame prevents me from
getting up to embrace my son / And warning him of those who want to
enlist him." Arresting Laor for having written such lines may sound
like fiction, but something similar has already happened. Last week
nine activists from New Profile, a feminist-pacifist organization
formed in 1998 that aims to demilitarize Israeli society, were
arrested on suspicion of incitement and assisting draft dodgers. The
police raided their homes and confiscated their computers. The
military advocate general requested the raid, the attorney general
obliged and the police carried it out.
The public reacted to the raid with typical
indifference; it came just as we were busy enjoying the cheesy
Independence Day holiday, complete with songs of self-praise about
Israel being the only democracy in the Middle East. But a democracy
that raids the homes of political activists is no democracy.
Democracies are tested by how they treat the fringes of society.
Locking up three and a half million Palestinians
in the occupied territories and denying them basic human rights has
already undermined Israel's pretentions of democracy, but now
dangerous cracks are appearing in our Jews-only democracy. They
aren't new - they first appeared in the early years of independence
- and now they're back. Those who make light of the recent arrests
may soon find themselves dealing with a new regime instead of New
Profile.
New Profile is a legally registered
association that believes it's possible to live in a state that
"doesn't consist of soldiers." That's its right, perhaps even its
duty. "We do not encourage, incite or preach in favor of draft
dodging," Smadar Ben-Natan, the organization's lawyer, wrote in a
letter to the deputy attorney general after the raid. "We offer a
stage where ideological questions concerning objections to serving
in the army [are raised], and offer information and support to
anyone interested."
Last year, when an organization with the sickening
motto "a true Israeli doesn't dodge the draft" was founded, New
Profile responded with another: "Think before you're drafted." Yes,
it's okay to think before you enlist, even in Israel. Yes, you're
allowed to think that military service in an army turned into an
army of occupation is immoral. Yes, you don't have to want to become
a soldier automatically, even in Israel. And you can even support
someone who believes that way.
New Profile isn't the first movement to deal with
the issue of refusing to enlist. It was preceded by other left-wing
movements, as well as some from the right. After Israel's pullout
from Gaza, the right also began preaching against enlisting in the
army. But no right-wing rabbi has been arrested, no computer
confiscated.
The hunting season on New Profile exposes a double
standard in the way the legal authorities treat the left and right,
a standard all too common. Protesters against the separation fence
in the West Bank town of Bil'in are routinely shot at, sometimes
fatally. But the Israel Defense Forces has never shot and killed
settlers during a protest, even though they are much more violent
than anti-fence protesters. (In Bil'in, even High Court decisions
are ignored.)
The police have limited the activities of the
leftist organization Anarchists against the Wall and raided the
homes of its members. At a time when fascist-like crusades against
artists who did not serve in the army are considered normal, it
might be good to remember that a quarter of army-aged young people
in Israel receive the army's permission not to enlist, claiming that
Torah is their craft.
It's time we appreciated opinionated youths - from
the left and right - who decide not to serve in the army for ethical
reasons and are willing to pay the price of their convictions. The
IDF is strong enough without them. Israel is strong enough to
tolerate those who think differently, even subversively. Maybe in
due time they will be praised as the true heroes of our time.
Words don't kill, but police raids on political
activists undermine our legal and moral basis. We must not keep
quiet over the raid. Those who are silent now should not be
surprised if one day they wake up and see the police outside the
home of a poet whose message is forbidden.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1082567.html
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