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NEWS & LETTERS,
January-February 2003
Israeli students refuse military service
Tel Aviv, Israel--Two imprisoned conscientious objectors
to military service, Noam Bahat and Hillel Goral, went on hunger strike, Jan.
16. Both are among the signatories of a letter signed last year by over 300 high
school students, declaring their refusal to serve in the Israeli army (see their
website at www.shministim.org.
Both objectors are serving a second consecutive prison term in defense of their
convictions and are held in the isolation ward of Military Prison No. 4, south
of Tel Aviv. According to Noam Bahat, the hunger strike comes to
protest his imprisonment for opposing the occupation of the Palestinian people,
as well as to protest the occupation itself. Bahat and Goral represent a growing wave of protest
among high school students ahead of their induction into the army. Some 300
students have signed a joint letter to Sharon, proclaiming their refusal to take
part in the repression of the Palestinian people. A remarkable illustration of the unrest emerged recently
when IDF chief of staff Gen. Moshe Yaalon gave a talk at Haifa's elite Reali
high school, whose pro-military bent is reflected in numerous graduates who
reached prominent posts in the army. Yaalon was heckled by a small group of
students who accused him of war crimes in defiance of the Geneva Convention. The protesters were silenced and ejected, and the school
principal--himself a former general who served as army spokesman--apologized to
Yaalon. That wasn't all: Ministry of Education Director-General Ronit Tirosh
issued a statement charging that the outburst by the students, and the labeling
of Yaalon as a war criminal, displayed a failure of all involved in the
students' education, falling short of their responsibility to instill them with
worthy values. Infantry Fst. Sgt. (res.) Yoni Kozlovsky of Tel Aviv was
sentenced to 28 days in military jail, Jan. 19, for refusal to serve in the
occupied territories (he was posted to guard the West Bank Jewish settlement of
Anatot). Kozlovsky, who is preparing his Ph.D. thesis in neuroscience at the Tel
Aviv University, is brother of another refusenik, Ro'i, who was sentenced for
refusal before the outbreak of the intifada. Yoni defended his refusal with the following statement: "I refuse to serve in the occupied territories
because I believe in liberty, equality and fraternity--words almost forgotten in
Hebrew. I refuse to take part in an occupation that denies three million
Palestinians their freedom and human rights. I refuse to take part in an
occupation marked by crimes and immoral deeds, an occupation that kills
civilians and steals their land, an occupation that employs detention, closures,
starvation, torture, theft and killing. "I detest the occupation because the occupation is
racism. I hope Palestinians and Israelis achieve peace, through a compromise
resting upon reconciliation, justice and morality, mutual respect and
compassion." --Information from Yesh Gvul |
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