Discontent Sets Up Camp in Israeli Army

For 28 days in October, Noam Kuzar sat in Military Prison No. 4.

The bespectacled 19-year-old soldier had violated one of the most vaunted principles of the Israeli experience. He refused an army command--orders, in this case, to deploy in the West Bank.

Since the start of Israel’s deadly confrontation with Palestinian stone-throwers and gunmen three months ago, a small but growing number of Israeli soldiers is refusing to serve in the mostly Palestinian-ruled West Bank and Gaza Strip. Like Kuzar, several have ended up in jail, having turned against the deeply entrenched, half-century-old duty to serve in their besieged country’s army.

“My whole life I’ve been against the Israeli army and the state being in the occupied territories,” Kuzar said. “What right did I have to be there? I couldn’t do something I so strongly object to.”

Once out of jail, Kuzar was reassigned to a military base where he cleans toilets and performs other menial tasks. He was removed from his unit--the other young men with whom he had performed a year of post-high school community service and with whom he had hoped to graduate from the army in three years’ time.

The resistance of a handful of regular soldiers and a larger number of reservists reflects changes in the way Israelis see their once unassailable army, and in the role the army plays today.

In a country where almost everyone is required to perform military service, many Israelis regard the resisters as traitors or cowards. Despite peace accords with Egypt and Jordan, Israel remains a country surrounded by enemies, a fact dramatized in the new outburst of violence. A strong army is essential to the nation’s survival, most Israelis believe.

But some are uncomfortable with the kind of duty increasingly thrust upon infantry soldiers confronting riots and demonstrations where Palestinian minors are on the front line.

Ishai Menuchin, a paratrooper in the Israeli army and a veteran of the Lebanon war, spent much of the last month pounding the sidewalks in search of young soldiers. On Friday mornings at Jerusalem’s central bus station, where soldiers congregate to go home for the weekend, Menuchin handed out pamphlets urging the recruits to think carefully about whether they really wanted to serve in what he calls an occupation army.

A war to protect Jewish settlements, the pamphlet declares, “is not our war!”

“Hey, soldier. Where are you headed?” the pamphlet continues. “On your way to serve in the occupied territories? . . . Maybe to prevent the Palestinian people from declaring independence? Maybe to put down the new intifada? Or could it be for all-out war?”

Reaction has been mixed. Most soldiers accept a pamphlet, maybe read it, occasionally comment on it. A few have gotten angry, Menuchin said, and torn it up.

All in all, however, the reception is in marked contrast to that of the 1980s, when Menuchin first embarked on his mission as guru of the conscientious objector. Leading resistance to the war in Lebanon, he was beaten by right-wing “patriots” and ended up in the hospital.

“Occupation by definition is an undemocratic act,” Menuhin said. “There is no solution but a political solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. I am not willing, and more and more Israelis are not willing, to take part in a military solution.”

Being a conscientious objector in a country like Israel is a unique manifestation. Most people have no problem with serving in the army, and if Israel was threatened by war from, say, Syria or Iran, they would not hesitate to report to duty.

The problem is wars of occupation, said Menuchin. He was jailed in 1983 for refusing to return to duty in Lebanon, which had been invaded by Israel for the stated purpose of rooting out Palestinian guerrillas. Today, like almost every Israeli male, he continues to perform his reserve duty of 30 days a year.

But the 42-year-old psychologist refuses to be sent to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where more than 350 people have been killed since Sept. 28 in near-daily clashes between Israelis and Palestinians.

Menuchin runs a left-wing organization called Yesh Gvul--”There Is a Limit”--that helps conscientious objectors. He said he has been inundated with calls and letters from disgruntled soldiers.

During the war in Lebanon, Menuchin said, 170 soldiers were imprisoned and more than 3,000 signed a petition of protest. During the first intifada, from 1987 to 1993, about 2,500 declared their refusal to serve, with about 200 landing in jail, he said.

During the current Palestinian revolt, Menuchin said, more than 30 reservists and seven regular soldiers have refused duty. Five of the seven regular soldiers were put in jail for terms ranging from one to 28 days; no reservists were imprisoned.

The Israeli army could not provide statistics on conscientious objectors or on the number of young men who have been jailed. In a statement, it said that soldiers who apply for release as conscientious objectors are referred to a committee that examines the petition. Frequently a “compromise” is reached, making it difficult to count the number of exemptions, the army said.

“In any case, there are only a few applicants each year,” it said.

Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz, the army chief of staff, recently told a conference that the number of reservists eager to work in the West Bank and Gaza had in fact reached record numbers since the latest intifada began. And 90% of reservists who are called up are reporting to their bases, higher than the usual average, the army said.

Israel prides itself on having as a centerpiece of its society a “citizens army” whose members hail from all walks of life--the rich, the poor, natives and new immigrants, leftists and right-wingers. Consequently, an effort is sometimes made to accommodate soldiers--especially reservists--by assigning them to units that suit their talents and allowing them to avoid tasks they might oppose on political grounds.

But with no external wars to fight, the average infantry unit these days inevitably will be stationed for a longer period in the West Bank or Gaza, Menuchin said.

Robert Terris, an American-born reservist, comes from a conservative background, with a religious education and a father who belongs to the right-wing Likud Party. It was his initial tour of duty during the first intifada that transformed his thinking.

“I went, confused and scared, and confronted hundreds of children with stones,” Terris recalled. “I saw my captain take a [Palestinian] boy and give him a whacking. That was the first big shock.”

That was in 1989. Terris completed his service as a tank commander and has reported to the reserves regularly. But when his reserve unit was called up in October and ordered to the West Bank town of Janin, Terris said no.

To his surprise, neither his commanders nor the other men in his unit were particularly outraged. The first Janin assignment was suspended, but Terris knows it’s just a matter of time before he will face jail or some other punishment.

“Morally,” said Terris, 31, “I will not allow myself to be put in a situation where I would have to shoot at a crowd, or take innocent lives, or lives of people who may not be innocent but who do not deserve to have their heads blown off.

“The violence is only leading to more violence. They attack us, we respond, then five more Palestinians are dead, there are more funerals, more demonstrations, more stones and then 30 more cousins, brothers, sisters ready to die. The army response is not effective.”

The willingness of resisters to speak out reflects a shift in thinking about the army, once a sacred cow that could not be criticized. That taboo has lifted gradually, starting with the war in Lebanon. Today’s conflict with the Palestinians has also subjected the Israeli military to severe criticism abroad--and, slowly, here as well--over its alleged use of excessive force.

“My refusal is part of a public education campaign [on] the duties of citizens in democratic society,” Menuchin said. “You should not do everything just because the government and commanders decide. You have to think and criticize. You are not a citizen who just obeys everything. You are critical. It is important to democracy to criticize.”