“One of the guards came to me and asked me if I was there to save the children from Gaza, then he hit me in the stomach,” said Alon-Lee Green, telling his experience in an Israeli prison this week.
Green and eight others were arrested on Sunday for protesting with around 600 other people along the Israeli border with Gaza, spending two nights and almost three days in prison before being under house arrest. Together, they represent part of a small light resistance more and more visible in Israel to a war which, for various reasons, many Israelis turn their backs.
“Some people protest because they consider him a political war,” said Green, who is also the national co -director of the standing activist group, said the growing meaning in Israel that the war against Gaza only serves the coalition of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Some are tired of fighting, some want the hostages (be released from Gaza), and some (protest against) what we do to the Palestinians. All are welcome,” he continued. “Do you want to resist the government? You are welcome. You don’t want to enlist? You are welcome. You have supported war until very recently? You are welcome.”
The polls in Israel show that the majority now promotes an agreement that would obtain the release of the captives held in Gaza, even if it means an end of war against Gaza. However, war continued.
“I don’t know if popular pressure will never stop war,” said Green. “I mean, his supporters have been in the minority for a year. To refuse (to answer the call) is our most powerful weapon: no soldiers, no occupation. We need more and more people to refuse. ”
Escalation
All anti-war activists Tel Aviv Tribune spoke to an increase in the interest of their movement following the unilateral decision of the Israeli government in mid-March to collapse the cease-fire to which he had previously accepted after months of negotiation.
Others spoke of a spectacular increase in support when, after 11 weeks of unprecedented siege in Gaza, Israel announced its last mass operation in the Palestinian territory devastated on May 17, planned, according to an Israeli official, to lead to “the conquest of the Gaza Strip and the maintenance of the territories”.
Before his last offensive, Israel called what he said to be “tens of thousands” of reservists to strengthen his number in Gaza.
Speaking after the announcement of the last military attack on Gaza, the Minister of Finance of Israel, Bezalel Smotrich, was clear in what he considered the objectives of the offensive, affirming that in a few months, Gaza would be “completely destroyed” and what remains of its pre-war population of more than two million million things to a narrow strip of the Egyptian border.
Solitary resistance
However, despite the new offensive to resume the ground already largely destroyed by the Israeli army, dissent is gaining ground.
Open letters Protestant against the war of military units and reservists publicly refusing to present themselves to the service become more frequent. In April, more than a thousand current and ancient pilots of Israel, generally considered as an elite unit, wrote an open letter protesting against a war which, according to them, served the “political and personal interests” of Netanyahu, “and not security”.
There are no official figures for how many reservists have not presented themselves in office. But, according to Israeli media, the number can reach 100,000. These figures are added to those who refuse their initial compulsory military service period.
Most of them are “gray” refusals, militants say. In other words, people who have not given any political reason to refuse to serve, officially refusing other reasons, such as the decline for medical reasons.
But Sofia Orr, a young woman of 19 years of Pardes Hannah, in northern Israel, is one of an increasing number of conscripts refusing their compulsory service and rendering this refusal as possible.
Orr refused to serve three times after being called for the first time on February 24, 2024. His first and second refusal each allowed 20 days in military prison. His third cost him 45 days.
“I had already decided to refuse when I was 15,” Orr told Tel Aviv Tribune. “I wondered:” If I am going to serve in the army, what cause am I in service, does it correspond to my values, who have I really helped? ” “She said.
“If I take it out, I just entered the Blood Edge cycle which occupies and oppresses the blood of the Palestinians daily?” She said she challenged what she described as cable societal expectations of Israeli life.
“I wanted to challenge this, so it was not only a question of refusing, but of doing so as publicly and strong as possible. I needed people to see it and know that we exist, that they could do the same, to bring Palestinian suffering to Israeli society and for the Palestinians to see it and know that they were not alone, ”she said.
Organized political resistance
Orr is a member of “Mesarvot”, an Israeli organization that supported conscience objectors in the face of calls from eminent politicians for refuses to be arrested and prosecuted, in particular to the member of the cabinet and former Israeli military spokesperson Miri Regev.
“There has been regular growth of refuses since October 7,” said Nimrod Flaschenberg, political analyst and Mesarvot spokesperson, referring to the 2023 attack on southern Israel which led to the War of Israel against Gaza. “But we have seen an exponential increase of 16, 17, refusing to serve recently. There are a hundred circulation of the open letter, all refusing the service and explaining why. ”
From the broader movement, said Flaschenberg, some refused to serve in a war that they had come to consider as political, others because they thought that it risked the life of the captives and a minority by repulsion for mass murder in Gaza and the West Bank in which they were asked to participate.
“There is always an Israeli public taboo on the watch of all public sympathy for the Palestinians,” said Flaschenberg about the low importance given to Gaza in the reasons for the most refusers, contrasting that with the general indignation which praised the former general and the chief of the Democrats of Israel, which was warned that Israel risks becoming considered as a pariah state ” that he warned that Israle was risking to become considered as a “state of pariah”, because he warned that Israèle has risked becoming considered as a “state of pariah”, because he warned that Israel risked becoming considered as a “state of pariah”, because he warned that Israel risked becoming considered as a “state of pariah”, Considered a “pariah state.” Palestinian babies “as a hobby” if he “did not return to mental health”.
“It really demonstrates the level of ignorance we are talking about,” said Flaschenberg. “Of course, Israel kills babies, but the Israelis just can’t accept this.”
A difficult sale
However, although the growing international condemnation of Israel focuses on the vilimation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Orr, this is likely to overlook a more severe reality.
“For many people here, it is the Israelis who are the real victims, the first, the last and the only victim of all this,” she said. “They don’t even see Palestinians like people, like a threat.”
Green, who immediately joined the demonstration at the Gaza border after the end of her night release, was just as fatalistic.
“I am not convinced that we will succeed. The government has been a minority of Israelis for about a year, and the war has continued,” he said.
But, despite this, he was not ready to abandon the call to the Israelis to wake up.
“Things are already pretty bad,” added Green. “We have destroyed almost all the Gaza buildings, we killed 18,000 babies and around 53,000 people. This is something with which we will have to live. “
“Do we really want to live with more?”
