Posted on 25-2-2002

Israeli Refuseniks
From www.zmag.org/ZNET.htm by Asaf Oron, Jewish Peace News, February 24, 2002

[Asaf Oron, a Sergeant Major in the Giv'ati Brigade, is one of the original
53 Israeli soldiers who signed the "Fighters' Letter" declaring that from
now on they will refuse to serve in the Occupied territories. He is signer
#8 and one of the first in the list to include a statement explaining his
action. (There are 251 signers as of February 17, 2002.) Below is the
translation of Oron's statement by Ami Kronfeld of Jewish Peace News.]

On February 5, 1985, I got up, left my home, went to the Compulsory Service
Center on Rashi Street in Jerusalem, said goodbye to my parents, boarded
the rickety old bus going to the Military Absorption Station and turned
into a soldier. Exactly seventeen years later, I find myself in a head to
head confrontation with the army, while the public at large is jeering and
mocking me from the sidelines. Right wingers see me as a traitor who is
dodging the holy war that's just around the corner. The political center
shakes a finger at me self-righteously and lectures me about undermining
democracy and politicizing the army.

And the left? The square, establishment, "moderate" left that only
yesterday was courting my vote now turns its back on me as well. Everyone
blabbers about what is and what is not legitimate, exposing in the process
the depth of their ignorance of political theory and their inability to
distinguish a real democracy from a third world regime in the style of Juan
Peron. Almost no one asks the main question: why would a regular guy get up
one morning in the middle of life, work, the kids and decide he's not
playing the game anymore? And how come he is not alone but there are
fifty... I beg your pardon, a hundred... beg your pardon again, now almost
two hundred regular, run of the mill guys like him who've done the same thing?

Our parents' generation lets out a sigh: we've embarrassed them yet again.
But isn't it all your fault? What did you raise us on? Universal ethics and
universal justice, on the one hand: peace, liberty and equality to all. And
on the other hand: "the Arabs want to throw us into the sea," "They are all
crafty and primitive. You can't trust them." On the one hand, the songs of
John Lennon, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Bob Marely, Pink Floyd. Songs of peace
and love and against militarism and war. On the other hand, songs about a
sweetheart riding the tank after sunset in the field: "The tank is yours
and you are ours." [allusions to popular Israeli songs - AK]. I was raised
on two value systems: one was the ethical code and the other the tribal
code, and I naïvely believed that the two could coexist.

This is the way I was when I was drafted. Not enthusiastic, but as if
embarking on a sacred mission of courage and sacrifice for the benefit of
society. But when, instead of a sacred mission, a 19 year old finds himself
performing the sacrilege of violating human beings' dignity and freedom, he
doesn't dare ask - even himself - if it's OK or not. He simply acts like
everyone else and tries to blend in. As it is, he's got enough problems,
and boy is the weekend far off. You get used to it in a hurry, and many
even learn to like it. Where else can you go out on patrol - that is, walk
the streets like a king, harass and humiliate pedestrians to your heart's
content, and get into mischief with your buddies - and at the same time
feel like a big hero defending your country? The Gaza Exploits became
heroic tales, a source of pride for Giv' ati, then a relatively new brigade
suffering from low self esteem. For a long time, I could not relate to the
whole "heroism" thing. But when, as a sergeant, I found myself in charge,
something cracked inside me. Without thinking, I turned into the perfect
occupation enforcer. I settled accounts with "upstarts" who didn't show
enough respect. I tore up the personal documents of men my father's age. I
hit, harassed, served as a bad example - all in the city of Kalkilia,
barely three miles from grandma and grandpa's home-sweet-home. No. I was no
"aberration." I was exactly the norm.

Having completed my compulsory service, I was discharged, and then the
first Intifada began (how many more await us?) Ofer, a comrade in arms who
remained in the service has become a hero: the hero of the second Giv'ati
trial. He commanded a company that dragged a detained Palestinian
demonstrator into a dark orange grove and beat him to death. As the verdict
stated, Ofer was found to have been the leader in charge of the whole
business. He spent two months in jail and was demoted - I think that was
the most severe sentence given an Israeli soldier through the entire first
Intifada, in which about a thousand Palestinians were killed. Ofer's
battalion commander testified that there was a order from the higher
echelons to use beatings as a legitimate method of punishment, thereby
implicating himself.

On the other hand, Efi Itam, the brigade commander, who had been seen
beating Arabs on numerous occasions, denied that he ever gave such an order
and consequently was never indicted. Today he lectures us on moral conduct
on his way to a new life in politics. (In the current Intifada,
incidentally, the vast majority of incidents involving Palestinian deaths
are not even investigated. No one even bothers.) And in the meantime, I was
becoming more of a civilian. A copy of The Yellow Wind [a book on life in
the Occupied Territories by the Israeli writer David Grossman, available in
English -AK] which had just come out, crossed my path. I read it, and
suddenly it hit me. I finally understood what I had done over there. What I
had been over there.

I began to see that they had cheated me: They raised me to believe there
was someone up there taking care of things. Someone who knows stuff that is
beyond me, the little guy. And that even if sometimes politicians let us
down, the "military echelon" is always on guard, day and night, keeping us
safe, each and every one of their decisions the result of sacred necessity.
Yes, they cheated us, the soldiers of the Intifadas, exactly as they had
cheated the generation that was beaten to a pulp in the War of Attrition
and in the Yom Kippur War, exactly as they had cheated the generation that
sank deep into the Lebanese mud during the Lebanon invasions. And our
parents' generation continues to be silent. Worse still, I understood that
I was raised on two contradictory value systems. I think most people
discover even at an earlier age they must choose between two value systems:
an abstract, demanding one that is no fun at all and that is very difficult
to verify, and another which calls to you from every corner - determining
who is up and who is down, who is king and who - pariah, who is one of us
and who is our enemy. Contrary to basic common sense, I picked the first.
Because in this country the cost-effective analysis comparing one system to
another is so lopsided, I can't blame those who choose the second.

I picked the first road, and found myself volunteering in a small,
smoke-filled office in East Jerusalem, digging up files about deaths,
brutality, bureaucratic viciousness or simply daily harassments. I felt I
was atoning, to some extent, for my actions during my days with the Giv'ati
brigade. But it also felt as if I was trying to empty the ocean out with a
teaspoon. Out of the blue, I was called up for the very first time for
reserve duty in the Occupied Territories. Hysterically, I contacted my
company commander. He calmed me down: We will be staying at an outpost
overlooking the Jordan river. No contacts with the local population is
expected. And that indeed was what I did, but some of my friends provided
security for the Damia Bridge terminal [where Palestinians cross from
Jordan to Israel and vice versa - AK]. This was in the days preceding the
Gulf War and a large number of Palestinian refugees were flowing from
Kuwait to the Occupied Territories (from the frying pan into the fire). The
reserve soldiers - mostly right wingers - cringed when they saw the female
consscripts stationed in the terminal happily ripping open down-comforters
and babies' coats to make sure they didn't contain explosives. I too
cringed when I heard their stories, but I was also hopeful: reserve
soldiers are human after all, whatever their political views.

Such hopes were dashed three years later, when I spent three weeks with a
celebrated reconnaissance company in the confiscated ruins of a villa at
the outskirts of the Abasans (if you don't know where this is, it's your
problem). This is where it became clear to me that the same humane reserve
soldier could also be an ugly, wretched macho undergoing a total regression
back to his days as a young conscript. Already on the bus ride to the Gaza
strip, the soldiers were competing with each other: whose "heroic" tales of
murderous beatings during the Intifada were better (in case you missed this
point: the beatings were literally murderous: beating to death). Going on
patrol duty with these guys once was all that I could take. I went up to
the placement officer and requested to be given guard duty only. Placement
officers like people like me: most soldiers can't tolerate staying inside
the base longer than a couple of hours. Thus began the nausea and shame
routine, a routine that lasted three tours of reserve duty in the Occupied
Territories: 1993, 1995, and 1997. The "pale-gray" refusal routine. For
several weeks at a time I would turn into a hidden "prisoner of
conscience," guarding an outpost or a godforsaken transmitter on top of
some mountain, a recluse. I was ashamed to tell most of my friends why I
chose to serve this way. I didn't have the energy to hear them get on my
case for being such a "wishy washy" softy. I was also ashamed of myself:
This was the easy way out. In short, I was ashamed all over. I did "save my
own soul." I was not directly engaged in wrongdoing - only made it possible
for others to do so while I kept guard.

Why didn't I refuse outright? I don't know. It was partly the pressure to
conform, partly the political process that gave us a glimmer of hope that
the whole occupation business would be over soon. More than anything, it
was my curiosity to see actually what was going on over there. And
precisely because I knew so well, first hand, from years of experience what
was going on over there, what reality was like over there, I had no trouble
seeing, through the fog of war and the curtain of lies, what has been
taking place over there since the very first days of the second Intifada.
For years, the army had been feeding on lines like "We were too nice in the
first Intifada," and "If we had only killed a hundred in the very first
days, everything would have been different." Now the army was given license
to do things its way. I knew full well that [former Prime Minister] Ehud
Barak was giving the army free hand, and that [current Chief of Staff]
Shaul Mofaz was taking full advantage of this to maximize the bloodshed.

By then, I had two little kids, boys, and I knew from experience that no
one - not a single person in the entire world - will ever make sure that my
sons won't have to serve in the Occupied Territories when they reach 18. No
one, that is, except me. And no one but me will have to look them in the
eye when they're all grown up and tell them where dad was when all that
happened. It was clear to me: this time I was not going. Initially, this
was a quiet decision, still a little shy, something like "I am just a bit
weird, can't go and can't talk about it too much either." But as time went
by, as the level of insanity, hatred, and incitement kept rising, as the
generals were turning the Israeli Defense Forces into a terror
organization, the decision was turning into an outcry: "If you can't see
that this is one big crime leading us to the brink of annihilation, then
something is terribly wrong with you!" And then I discovered that I was not
alone. Like discovering life on another planet.

First, we declare our commitment to the first value system. The one that is
elusive, abstract, and not profitable. We believe in the moral code
generally known as God (and my atheist friends who also signed this letter
would have to forgive me - we all believe in God, the true one, not that of
the Rabbis and the Ayatollahs). We believe that there is no room for the
tribal code, that the tribal code simply camouflages idolatry, an idolatry
of a type we should not cooperate with. Those who let such a form of idol
worship take over will end up as burnt offerings themselves.

Second, we (as well as some other groups who are even more despised and
harassed) are putting our bodies on the line, in the attempt to prevent the
next war. The most unnecessary, most idiotic, cruel and immoral war in the
history of Israel. We are the Chinese young man standing in front of the
tank. And you? If you are nowhere to be seen, you are probably inside the
tank, advising the driver.