Israeli 'draft dodgers' protest occupation
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"Army statistics show the number of young people who do not enlist for military service has crept up in recent years to more than one in four men in 2007 and more than 43 per cent of women."
Pretty sweet selective edit there. The article actually says:
Ultra-Orthodox Jews have been exempt from military service for years and their ranks are growing.
But more secular Israelis are also finding ways around joining up, sometimes by saying they are conscientious objectors or unfit.
Some say they are loath to fight for an occupying force and are willing to go to jail for their beliefs.
Others say they do not trust Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government with their lives, after a report said the leader acted impulsively in going to war against Lebanon last year.
Some young Israelis would simply rather focus on their education or career than on defending their country.
The article skews the facts. When israel was founded, and for the next 40 years, there was an existential threat to Israel, and for a majority of that time there was a shortage of bodies, hence the mandatory draft of both men and women.
Over the years, as Israel becomes stronger and more advanced, and the population grows, the need became less. There are enough people to draft to allow for individuals personal needs. 20 years ago, you could not want all you want, you were going in. Now, there are enough to hand pick the highly motived citizens, and leave those who might be problematic physically, mentally, or otherwise.
For example, Israel always had a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy toward gays, until 1993, when they allowed them to serve openly. Before 1993, a gay could quietly serve if he wished, OR receive a pass on military service if he so desired. Now they can openly serve, or not, if they so desire. So when I first came to Israel, I met a few guys of the draft age, who didn't want to serve. They simply weren't into giving up 3 years of their lives, and preferred to party. They claimed to be gay to receive a pass on service.
So, as you see, there are lots of reasons someone might refuse to serve. 99% are for selfish or personal reasons, not because they disagree with policy. Those who disagree with policy are called refuseniks, as I've stated, and once again, number is 628-633:
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This guy serve next to me in the IDF 101st Airborne. Our platoon of 22 guys met at his house on weekends off to have a BBQ and relax. I slept next to the guy for 3 years.
We Will Not Continue to Occupy, Destroy, Deport, Kill, Starve and Humiliate By Yedioth Ahronoth eMail to a friend
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Posted on March 31, 2002
Yedioth Ahronoth (p. M18) by Haim Tal -- [Jan. 25] Shuki Sadeh, 25, a university student from Kfar Bilu and a staff sergeant in reserves, returned from reserve duty in Khan Yunis a month ago. It was only when he saw combat soldiers implementing the "warning shot procedure" on Palestinian children, that he realized how indifferent the battalion was toward human life. When a young boy approaches a distance of 100 meters from the outpost, shots are to be fired 50 meters to his right or left, even if he just wants to play or lay a trap for birds. "Once a sniper in the outpost hit a child from a distance of 150 meters," Sadeh relates. "I had a feeling the matter was whitewashed. What angered me is that among our soldiers, they talked about another dead Arab, while those who think like me simply said nothing. There is an atmosphere of `let's get `em.' A kind of poison that I didn't see even in Lebanon."
Shuki's a good guy, very smart, and a dedicated soldier. I find his take interesting, as it did not happen in our 3 years together, not once. He's not lying; I know, because I know him well. It must have happened in his yearly reserve duty later on. But Shuki is the only guy from my draft of 500 paratroopers who is a refusenik, the only guy who sees things this way. Not surprising, because he was a hippy peacenik even before the army, and obviously views the experience through his personal glasses, the filter of his upbringing and life experience.
If you analyze what he says, it's telling. He wasn't angered that the kid was shot. Many times kids are used to transport or plant bombs, and sometimes to carry out attacks. All Palestinian kids know to stay away from IDF posts; not because the soldiers are mean, but because when a kid blew himself up last week outside the outpost, the soldiers are going to be very wary, and use whatever means tokeep them away. Shuki knows this very well, so he understands the situation in which the kid was shot.
What angered him was the attitude of the soldier/s who shot him. Here's a small tidbit about the military and the psychology of killing: 99% of people don't want to kill. The militaries job is to teach you to over-ride the basic human instinct not to kill, and enable you to pull the trigger. In WWI, millions of rounds were fired over the heads of opposing soldiers ON PURPOSE, because the soldiers were quickly conscripted, lacked training, and weren't willing to kill. One way some/many soldiers deal with killing is dehumanization of the enemy. If you hang out with US soldiers, you hear lots or 'rag-head' 'sand-ni**er' talk. That's a big part of a soldier enabling himself to kill on command. So the IDF sniper who killed a kid in front of Shuki, when he said 'just another dead Arab', is doing his best to perform the necessary job at hand while keeping his sanity. It's not the sign of an insensitive cold-blooded killer, it's the sign of a very normal human doing something he very much doesn't want to do, and was raised not to do. If the sniper looked through his scope, and admired how cute the kid was, and wondered how his mother would scream and cry when she found out her baby was dead, he could never pull the trigger.
Shuki understands the necessity of the situation, but not the aftermath, how soldiers deal with it. Too bad.
