The National, November 14, 2009
At a time when most Israeli girls her age are fantasizing about their post-army travels, Emelia Markovich, 19, is considering the jail time that looms ahead.
Markovich is a member of a group of shministim, Hebrew for 12th graders. But these shministim aren’t your average high school students. They are conscientious objectors, referred to refuseniks because they are unwilling to participate in the army service that is mandatory for non-religious Jewish men and women.
In October, 88 shministim—some still enrolled in school, some recent graduates—signed a letter of refusal addressed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and IDF Chief of Staff Gaby Ashkenazi. “We hereby declare that we will toil against the occupation and oppression policies of the Israeli government,” the statement reads.
The occupation, they write, creates an “unbearable actuality for Palestinians in the occupied territories.” And it will not achieve peace, they say.
“There is no military solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—only peace will ensure life and security for Jews and Arabs in this country.”
Markovich, whose family immigrated to Israel from the Former Soviet Union when she was an infant, was amongst those who signed the missive.
Ironically, it was a letter from the army that sent her on the path to refusing.
When Markovich was still in high school and she began receiving mail from the army about her upcoming service, she realized how little she knew about the IDF and the occupation. “I started to look for information,” she says. “I did research. And I decided I didn’t want to take part in it.”
She went before the Conscientious Objection Committee, the body of the army that sometimes grants enlistees a discharge due to moral objections. “They said no,” Markovich recalls. “You can’t talk about pacifism to officers.”
Markovich considered lying to get a medical discharge, but didn’t want to be dishonest. So she refused.
But the IDF doesn’t acknowledge refuseniks so, technically, Markovich still hasn’t been released from army. When she doesn’t report to duty in February, she will receive anywhere from one to four weeks in jail for refusing an order.
After she completes her sentence, Markovich is likely to receive another order, which she will again disregard—and that means more time in jail. The army lacks clear guidelines for dealing with refuseniks, so Markovich could find herself bouncing in and out of prison in this manner for two years, the amount of time young women are expected to serve, or more.
Markovich faces other repercussions. She anticipates difficulties finding work as many employers don’t want to hire people who haven’t served in the army.
And her neighbors have threatened her with a lawsuit.
When Markovich was interviewed by an Israeli media outlet, she mentioned her hometown. Other residents told her she was tarnishing the community’s name and warned her they would sue. Though her parents are supportive of her actions, Markovich still feels intimidated by her neighbors.
Jerusalemite Yaara Shafrir has not faced objections from her acquaintances or family—her mother was a refusenik in the 1970s—but some of her friends don’t understand her decision to refuse. “They can’t see why I chose such a difficult way to get a discharge,” Shafrir, 17, says, stating that most of her friends opted out of the army by claiming medical exemptions.
Shafrir, who will go before the Conscientious Objection Committee in February, feels that publicly refusing army service is a small step in the process of improving Israel.
“I don’t see myself as standing apart from society, as a viewer—we’re a part of society, so we’re a part of the change.”
Shafrir emphasizes that her decision is not an action against the army or the soldiers themselves; rather it’s in opposition to the political machinery that keeps the occupation alive.
It is difficult to estimate exactly how many Israelis choose not to serve in the army due to moral objections. Some Israelis, unwilling to face the social and legal repercussions of refusing, take other avenues, such as medical exemptions. Young men who study at yeshiva, religious institutions, are automatically released from the three years of mandatory duty their secular counterparts face. And Israeli girls need only to claim religious modesty to be set free from the army.
Earlier this year, the AP reported that– in hopes of boosting the sagging enrollment rate of women, currently about 50%–the Israeli army is now hiring private investigators to spy on girls who have received religious exemptions. The surveillance is conducted in hopes of catching the girls in compromising positions that would be taboo to the devout. Since the program began in 2008, 520 young women have been caught engaging in less-than-religious behaviors.
Haggai Matar of New Profile, an Israeli NGO that advocates for the demilitarization of Israel and offers guidance and emotional support to the shministim and others who choose not to serve, says that conscription rates don’t tell the whole story. Approximately 25% of Israeli men drop out of the army within a year, he says, putting the actual service rate for men around 50%.
New Profile is encouraged by the number of young Israelis opting out. “This is huge and threatening [to the army],” Matar says. Matar, who served two years in jail for refusing military service, also points to the recent criminal investigation of New Profile as more evidence of an army that feels insecure about its ability to keep its numbers up.
Are the refusniks a growing trend, an increasing threat to enlistment rates?
“No,” Matar responds. The shministim movement peaked in 2005, when 100 high school seniors signed a letter of refusal, and has reached a plateau since then, he explains.
The current refusal movement is just one wave of many, says Dr. Gadi Algazi, historian and social activist. The first came in the early 1970s as “a reaction to the endless skirmishes in the Sinai and the Israeli government’s rejection of the Egyptian peace offer,” Dr. Algazi states.
As early as 1979—12 years into the occupation—young Israelis began objecting to serving in the territories. Dr. Algazi, part of this first group, spent 10 months in prison.
Dr. Algazi estimates that, through the years, at least 600 refuseniks have followed suit. In Israel, a country of 7 million, this is proportionally higher than the number of American soldiers who were jailed for objecting to service in Vietnam.
Not all of these refuseniks are shministim. For some, like Tom Mehager, a former artillery commander, the decision comes later in life.
In 2003, Mehager was on reserve duty—which Israeli men are subject to annually until the age of 45—in the West Bank. He was asked to help man a roadblock near to Ramallah. A superior told Mehager, 26 at the time, that the barrier was intended to be “collective punishment.”
“The decision was crystal clear,” Mehager, who grew up in the settlement of Gilo, recalls. “I refused. And I spent four weeks in a military jail.”
Markovich contemplates her own forthcoming time in prison. “I am afraid. I don’t know what will happen there.”
She adds that being jailed for her moral convictions is an “insult.” But she takes heart in something. “Palestinians often say that we [refuseniks] are their hope.”
For more information about the shministim, please see http://www.shministim.com
*Photo by Ilan Mizrahi.