Deciding to refuse...

[Violet_Crumble]

Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza presents acute moral dilemmas to many of its citizens. Some, like Guy Grossman, respond with ‘selective refusal’: a willingness to serve in the military but not in the occupied territories. Here, he explains the soul-searching and the political understanding that informs his decision.

It is a truism that heartless terrorism against Israeli civilians plays into the hands of extremists from both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Terrorism provides an ideological justification for Israel’s permanent presence in the occupied territories: a tangible threat that serves to justify the occupation, both internally to Israeli society and externally, to international public opinion.

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For me, the decision to refuse was not a reaction to a specific event or even a series of events, but was crystallised over many years of arduous soul-searching, while I served as a combat officer in the occupied territories.

With my own eyes, I have seen the humanitarian disaster, the filth, the poverty and the humiliation caused by infinite curfews, closures and roadblocks. I have seen the violation of civil and human rights, mainly the non-existence of freedoms such as movement, speech and expression of opinion. I have witnessed the deaths and injuries of many innocent lives, both Israeli and Palestinian. I have shot people and felt responsible for their loss of life.

Within this chaotic disastrous landscape, etched with pain, I have always looked for a justification. Instead, I found only a myth, the greatest of our mutual existence: the idea that we have to militarily occupy the West Bank and Gaza in order to defend our homes in Tel Aviv, Netanya and Hadera.

After many years, I finally understood that our presence there has little to do with Israel’s security. My friends and I realised that the possible price of the everlasting occupation was to more than our bodies and our mental stability. Refusal became not just a moral obligation, but also a civil duty.

http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-2-97-1481.jsp