Current issue of Kingston Peace News
Conscientious Objectors' Day
With Conscientious Objectors day falling on the 15th of this month, here
is the account by Ishai Menuchin, who refused to participate in the occupation
of Palestine. So far there are 1,329 rufusniks bravely standing up to
the Israeli army.
You're 18 and a paratrooper. You're learning new things and meeting interesting
people. You're an officer, commanding others. It's an adventure. You think
that what you are doing is defending Israel, but soon find what you are
really doing is occupying another country.
I was called up to fight in the invasion of Lebanon in the early 1980s.
I was naive and believed it was a war of defence. It was easy for me,
since as I was in an elite unit, I had very little to do with daily life
of the occupation.
When we went to train in the Occupied Territories - the West Bank or Gaza
- we would be off in the mountains or the desert and had no contact with
the Palestinians.
That was until I was leading my men on a training mission in the Sinai
desert and was ordered into Gaza after a Palestinian grenade attack on
an army truck, which had killed two.
Intelligence had tracked the man responsible to a refugee camp and my
unit, being the closest, was sent in to capture him.
So there was I, crawling through the mud and sewage of this camp in the
middle of the night. We knew he still had grenades, so we had to rush
his house fast.
We caught him in bed. His wife sleeping beside him was crying. His children
were crying.
We took him outside and handed him over to officers from another unit,
so we could begin the search for the hand grenades.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw one of these officers cock his pistol
and tell the prisoner to run in Arabic. I didn't know what to do, I was
shocked. The man knew, like I did, that if he had obeyed the command run,
he would have been shot. He lay down and didn't get up, even though they
kicked him. Israeli military police eventually arrived to arrest him.
We never found the grenades and eventually were told our prisoner was
the wrong man - he just happened the share the same name as the grenade
attacker.
I don't know why I didn't do anything to stop what happened that night.
It was so hard to not be a part of such things when you are a soldier
in the Occupied Territories.
That incident made me understand occupation and humiliation and showed
me exactly what being an occupier was. It still haunts me.
I began what is now called selective refusal. As a reservist, I did not
refuse to be called up, but I refused to be involved in policing actions.
Then I refused to cross into Lebanon or the Occupied Territories.
I talked with my soldiers. A small minority said I was doing the right
thing. Another minority refused to talk to me because I had gone against
our brotherhood. The rest said we'd talk again when I got back from jail.
I was sent to prison for 35 days. It was the beginning of the mass refusals
and there were demonstrations in Tel Aviv calling for my release.
Once out, an officer again ordered me to go to Lebanon, and again I refused.
I heard him on the phone saying he wanted to send me back to my cell,
but he was told to send me to a less elite unit as a punishment.
I felt it was too easy for me just to stop taking part in the occupation,
so I set up the group Yesh Gvul [There is a limit] to act as a model for
other reservists and to support those who become refuseniks like me.