CATHOLICS hate Protestants in Northern Ireland, Muslims hate Hindus in Kashmir, Israelis hate Palestinians in the Middle East. Over time, people who watch global politics become, perhaps not comfortable with, but accustomed to these norms of international conflict.
So there was a feeling of the world's turning upside down when hundreds of Israeli Army reserve officers and soldiers signed a statement saying they would refuse to continue serving in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. While debate rages within Israel about whether the signers are traitors or heroes, all people owe these soldiers respect for the courage to live by their principles instead of public opinion.
The conscientious objectors are not refusing to remain in these dangerous areas out of fear for their own safety. All are combat veterans who have served in the occupied territories. Their experiences there have given them reason to be disturbed by the moral hazard of their work for Israel Defense Forces (IDF). In their letter, which can be found at www.seruv.org.il, the signatories asserted their loyalty to their country and their record of service to it.
However, they claim that during their service in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, they had received orders which only worked to perpetuate Israel's domination of Palestinians, rather than to keep Israel and its people safe and secure. The "refuseniks," as some call them, declared themselves to "have seen the bloody toll this occupation exacts from both sides ... [and] understand now that the price of occupation is the loss of IDF's human character and the corruption of the entire Israeli society." Joining the viewpoint of their erstwhile Palestinian enemies, the letter-signers said that they knew the territories were not Israeli. They predicted that the settlements, 200,000 Israelis amid some 3 million Palestinans, would be evacuated someday.
"We hereby declare that we shall not continue to fight this War of the Settlements. We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people. We hereby declare that we shall continue serving in the Israel Defense Forces in any mission that serves Israel's defense.The missions of occupation and oppression do not serve this purpose - and we shall take no part in them."
Although Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called such refusals "the beginning of the end of the democracy," they are not unprecedented. Dissenting soldiers helped pressure Israel to withdraw from Sinai and Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s. The ability to assess the consequences of their actions keeps members of the armed forces part of the moral base of their nation. Indeed, soldiers sent outside their own nation provide an ethical perspective their fellow citizens cannot. No one knows better than the men and women who are fighting or administering an area how their presence affects that territory.
Nor are soldiers the only Israelis who protest their country's actions against Palestinians. Many groups, including Gush Shalom, the Jewish Peace Fellowship, PEACE NOW!, Junity and Not In My Name advocate Israel's departure from the areas taken in the Arab-Israeli War of 1967. The organization Matzpun, which is Hebrew for "conscience," asks that Israeli goods be boycotted "as long as Israel controls any part of the territories it occupied in 1967."
Regarding their defiance as a domestic affair, the reservists declined to talk to the foreign press. However, they told Israeli reporters about their guilt over shooting into neighborhoods and bulldozing homes.
Some military officials have suggested that the reservists should stay in their units and simply resist specific commands - Israeli soldiers have the right to refuse illegal orders.
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Ami Ayalon, former chief of the Shin Bet internal security service, said he actually found the scarcity of refusals disturbing. In an interview with Israel TV's Channel 2, he decried shooting an unarmed youth as a blatantly illegal order, and said he was worried by the number of children who had been killed since the intifada - Palestinian uprising - started in September 2000. Ayala asked, "In each case, was there no other choice? Did we have to shoot to kill? That's a question that should worry us all."
The refuseniks consider their presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip inherently oppressive and immoral. Lieutenant David Zonshein described the impossibility of administering the occupied territories, where all Palestinian movement is monitored by Israeli forces for fear of violence against the settlers.
"I stopped ambulances at checkpoints, I stripped areas clean of groves and trees that are people's livelihood, I entered houses and threatened the father, and I fired at neighborhoods as a paratroop officer, and, as such, I signed the letter, to say: Enough."
Zonshein reminded his Israeli critics that all the soldiers who sign the letter are willing to sacrifice their lives for Israel, but only under "basic moral conditions. Not everything is allowed, not even in war."
Americans should hope that our troops have an equal capacity for ethical thinking if they are called upon to act against their consciences. Though a soldier must obey commands for an army to be successful, illegitimate tactics in pursuit of just ends will cause us to win a technical battle while losing the moral war.
(Pallavi Guniganti's column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily.She can be reached at pguniganti@cavalierdaily.com.)
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