- Haggai Matar, Adam Maor, Shimri Tsameret, Matan Kaminer
and Noam Bahat - the five conscientious objectors to military service -
are getting out of prison tomorrow, after serving a year's sentence, and
another year in repeated remands. It is not clear what the army is planning
for the day after their release. Will they be required to enlist again?
Will they be sent to prison again? Are five youngsters capable of carrying
on their shoulders the entire objection struggle opposite a strong military
establishment that enjoys the support of the consensus? Is it fair to
expect
it of them?
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- An unjustified feeling of failure prevails in the
conscientious
objectors movement. The army defeated the objectors, as expected, by
imposing
on themgrave punishment. But this victory was like the victory over terror.
It is a victory of the strong over the weak, which yields only a momentary
sense of satisfaction. Just as you cannot crush terror while constantly
abusing the population it comes from, so you cannot defeat the objectors
while ignoring their arguments on the occupation's immorality.
-
- It is hard to defeat youngsters who refuse to cooperate
with continuous anomaly. It is hard to prevent the trickling down of the
objectors' message, and hard to ignore their accumulative influence on
the revulsion the public feels toward the occupation and the settlement
movement, which prevents putting an end to it.
-
- The decision to withdraw from Gaza also derived from
a fear of growing conscientious objection; the IDF stopped sending reserve
soldiers to Gaza for fear of increasing insubordination.
-
- The IDF has changed in the last decade. Religious
nationalists
who identify with the occupation policy have filled the command ranks.
What is erroneously called "fear of civil war" is nothing other
than the fear that hundreds of religious uniform wearers would rebel when
the command comes and refuse to withdraw from the territories.
-
- The settlers, who have already taken over the Likud's
central committee and the defense agenda, and determine the fence's route
and an excessive share of the state's budget, are today threatening the
IDF from inside and out. A day will come, and it will probably come soon,
when there will be a majority in the public, the cabinet and the Knesset
for an overall withdrawal, but there will be no one to carry it out.
-
- The left-wing draft objectors have outed the right-wing
objectors, and just as well. Today it is already clear that on the one
side of the conscience barrier there are objectors who are not willing
to infringe on universal human rights, while on the other side there are
objectors whose conscience bothers them only when they are required to
move their family to another abode in de luxe conditions. Today it is
already
clear that the struggle is between the settlers' state and the State of
Israel, and the only question is which of these states is the IDF
serving.
-
- Insubordination in all its nuances was never a goal in
itself. The objectors did not think of sweeping thousands after them, only
of sharpening the debate on the morality of the occupation and the
settlements,
and on the limits of obedience to an unacceptable policy, which includes
committing war crimes.
-
- When the settlers say uprooting settlements is a
"crime
against humanity," they are cunningly using left-wing objectors'
vocabulary.
But the issues are defined in international treaties, and it is the
establishment
of settlements on occupied territory that the treaties define as a war
crime, not uprooting them.
-
- The objectors made excessive use of the term
"conscience"
in their trial, mainly for legal reasons, to explain their position, making
insufficient use of terms of political protest. Instead of saying that
they are not willing to serve in an occupation army, they argued that they
are not capable of doing so. This mistake in presenting their case aroused,
justifiably, the question, why is it more conscionable to let terrorists
murder innocent Israelis than wipe out terrorists while harming
Palestinians
who happened to be around? Unfortunately, the argument has deteriorated
to whether this or that operation is moral, instead of discussing whether
the occupation policy in general is moral.
-
- The Palestinian suicide bombers were not the ones who
made the public sick of the occupation. While the suicide bombers aroused
the instinct for revenge, the objectors aroused the instinct for
withdrawal,
and the sense of shame. The programs paying tribute to the IDF that fill
the state channel's broadcast time table do not increase the public's
flimsy
confidence in the wisdom of the policy of using more and more force, and
the local authority workers who have not been paid their wages know that
when it comes to the settlements, the state funds continue flowing like
water.
-
- There will not be a civil war because the settlers are
ultimately a vociferous, bullying and destructive minority, which can be
fitted in its entirety into Jerusalem's Zion Square. The insubordination
sharpened the bitter argument with this public, fanned the flames, cracked
the fake consensus, canceled the reconciliation attempts and forced
everyone,
whether he identifies with the objectors or not, to take a political and
moral stand on either side of the Green Line.
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