“As a Jew, an American and a mother, the invasion of Gaza filled me with unbearable sadness. While Hamas’ attacks on Israeli villages are deplorable, Israel’s disproportionate response is unconscionable… In loving memory of our ancestors and for the future of our—and Palestinian—children, more American Jews should speak out and reach out.”
~ Medea Benjamin, CODEPINK co-founder

The High Holy Days are a time to review the past year, to acknowledge our moral strengths and weaknesses, and to turn toward the New Year with a renewed commitment to living our values. One part of that process of “teshuvah ve tzedakah”, turning and returning, is to tell the stories that powerfully illustrate the Jewish values of devotion to life and justice. During this period of intense reflection, two courageous young Israeli women who refused to serve in the Israeli army will share their stories in a national tour called, “Why We Refuse: A National Tour of Israeli Young Women for Peace,” from September 11 to October 11.

Maya Wind and Netta Mishly, both 19, are part of a group of Israeli high school seniors called the Shministim (“twelfth-graders”) who went to prison for their principled refusal to join the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) upon graduation because of their opposition to Israel’s policies toward Palestine and occupation of its territories. About 100 Israeli youth, including Maya and Netta, have signed the 2008 Shministim letter articulating their reasons for refusal including “Israeli ‘defense’ methods: checkpoints, ‘targeted’ killing, roads for Jews only, sieges and more, which serve the land seizing policy, annex more occupied territories into Israel and trample on Palestinian human rights… It is impossible to harm and imprison in the name of freedom, and thus it is impossible to be moral and serve the occupation.”

Netta, at the age of sixteen, was an organizer for an alternative education project. It was in this project that the idea of the 2008 Shministim letter was born. In 2009 she was sent to jail for 20 days after refusing to serve in the Israeli army. Since her release, she has been involved in immigrant and refugee struggles as well as anti-occupation actions.

Maya works for Rabbis for Human Rights, and guides political tours in East Jerusalem and the West Bank for the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions. She also co-leads the Jerusalem dialogue youth group of New Profile, the feminist movement for the demilitarization of Israel.

“We believe it is important to spread information about the Israeli occupation and about and the movements that work against it,” said Maya, who grew up attending religious Jewish schools. She joined the Shministim in December 2008 and spent 40 days in prison before her release in March. “We feel it is important to expose the American people, specifically the Jewish community, to the role they play in maintaining the occupation. We hope to empower people our age to take responsibility by taking a more active role in the resistance movements.”

Many more American Jews have begun to question and speak out against the Israeli occupation since the January 09 assault on Gaza. According to a March 2009 poll of American Jews, 60 percent oppose the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and 72 percent favor America’s assuming an active role in the peace process, even if it means having the U.S. take tough positions such as publicly disagreeing with both the Israelis and Arabs or exerting pressure on both parties to make compromises. In the same poll, 59 percent of American Jews felt that Israel’s military action on Gaza had no effect on Israel’s security (41 percent) or made Israel less secure (18 percent), while only 41 percent felt it made Israel more secure. What these young conscientious objectors have to say about the occupation and the militarization in Israeli society is of critical importance for us.

Maya Wind and Netta Mishly refuse to rule over an occupied people. They refuse to contribute to a deadly cycle of violence with their neighbors. They refuse to confiscate land, to demolish homes, to detain Palestinians without charge. They refuse to guard checkpoints, to enforce a siege, to usher in a humanitarian disaster.

“Last year Jewish Voice for Peace sent over 40,000 letters of support to the Shministim as they were going to prison,” said Sydney Levy of Jewish Voice for Peace. “We must continue to let the world know that for the sake of both Israelis and Palestinians, Israel’s occupation must end, and that a new generation of young people is willing to go to jail to stand up and say NO.”

Whatever our position on the many issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we have a unique opportunity to learn as we listen to Maya and Netta discuss their personal experiences of growing up in Israel and becoming conscientious objectors, and how Americans can become part of a movement away from constant conflict and insecurity, and toward a durable peace with justice.

For more info on the tour, organized by CODEPINK and Jewish Voice for Peace, please visit www.whywerefuse.org or email locals@codepinlalert.org.

“This new generation of young Israeli kids is standing up to the government – they call ‘em ‘Shministim.’ … They believe in a better, more peaceful future for themselves and for Israelis and Palestinians, and they are refusing to join the Israeli army. They’re in jail, holding strong against immense pressure from family, friends and the Israeli government.” – Ed Asner, “The Shministim” from Huffington Post

In the U.S., those who refuse to serve, we call them conscientious objectors. In Israel, young high school students who refuse to serve in the Israeli military in opposition to the occupation of Palestinian Territories are called Shministim.

From Howard Zinn who wrote eloquently about Raz Bar-David Varon, to Ed Asner who penned a piece on Huffington Post about how Omer Goldman’s story grabbed him, over 12,000 people have joined in calling for their release.

Their stories and statements speak for themselves. On the day Raz was arrested, this was Raz’s statement:

“I have witnessed this army demolishing, shooting and humiliating people whom I did not know, but have learnt to respect for their ability to go on dealing with these horrors on a daily basis. There’s supposed to be a good reason for all of this. This reason is supposed to be my defense. I feel like screaming: ‘This does not defend me! It hurts me!’ It hurts me when people, Palestinians, are being so brutally assaulted, and it hurts me when they later turn their hatred towards me because of it. I wasn’t born to serve as a soldier who occupies another, and the struggle against the occupation is mine too. It is a struggle for hope, for a reality that sometimes feels so far away. I have a responsibility for this society. My responsibility is to refuse.”

Omer Goldman has received additional press in particular because her father is the outgoing deputy head of Mossad, the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations. Igal Sarna writes a moving piece about Goldman’s journey:

For months before she refused to be drafted into the Israel Defence Forces she went to a psychologist every week to prepare for what was to come: incarceration in a cell in a military prison. A narrow cage for a songbird.

This Thursday, December 18th, there will be a Day of Action in support of the Shministim, where groups will visit Israeli Consul Generals across the country to lobby for the release of the young students.

According to Jewish Voice for Peace:

So far, about 7 of the approximately 60 young Israeli students who have signed the Shministim letter of 2008 have served time in prison. Typically, they go in for up to 3 weeks, are released for a week and then sent back in. This continues until they are 21 or obtain a medical release.

Nineteen-year-old Tamar Katz (picture to left) is currently in solitary confinement where advocates say “she is being mistreated” by jailers because she refuses to wear a military uniform.

On the 18th, there will also be a rally in Tel Aviv, where the Shministim and supporters will hand-deliver these 12,000 voices in the form of postcards and letters to Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Organizations from AFSC to Amnesty International, Gush Shalom and Sojourners are involved in the organizing effort.

In thinking about the Shministim, I am reminded of a sermon that Rabbi Ellen Lippmann gave this past Rosh Hashanah on seeking moral leadership.

Traditions so often sustain us. Coming into Rosh HaShanah, I could hear the sounds of Avinu Malkeinu in my head, as I yearned to hear its haunting melody and words yet again. But not all traditions need to be repeated again and again; some can be altered, some discarded, some replaced. Akiva himself broke through the order of prayer in his time to give his urgent prayer of necessity. Chutzpah!

Surely we too are living in a time that requires urgent prayer and an overturning of the usual order—some chutzpah. When I think of Rosh HaShanah in this way, I realize that as much as I love singing Avinu Malkeinu, I am sick of the Akkedah, the story of the binding—sacrifice? murder?—of Isaac. This story is everywhere in the midrash, poetry, art, and yes, our liturgy. And I am sick of it. It contains not a single character I want to identify with, not the God who commands the sacrifice, not Abraham who obeys so submissively, not Isaac who goes along with only one question along the way, and not even the poor ram who loses his life because someone has to. It is our tradition to read this story on Rosh HaShanah and I am sick of it. Over the cries of “We can’t leave it out, it’s part of our tradition!” I say, “Let’s.”

Not just because we need change, though that is clear enough in our liturgy, in our nation, in our world. No, I say let’s leave it out because what we need now to face the terrifying world is a story of moral courage, of protest, of hope, not one of submission to God who lays down an impossible command. What we need is an Akiva to overturn the usual in a time of crucial urgency.

In a country where all young people are required to serve, saying no, refusing to go along with “the tradition” of serving in the army, in a country and a world so embroiled in violence and war, is a story of moral courage.

According to Igal Sarna, the first letter was written thirty-eight years ago, by high school students who sent a letter to then prime minister, Golda Meir, in April 1970, against the occupation and the War of Attrition.

In a letter by the Shministim in 2008, they write:

We hereby challenge every citizen who wonders if the military’s policy in the occupied territories is conducive to the progression of the peace process, to discover by himself/herself the truth and to lift the veil which distorts the reality of the situation; to verify statistical data; to look for the humane side in him/her and in the society which stands in front of him/her, to disprove the myths that were routed within us regarding the necessity of the IDF’s in the Palestinian Occupied Territories, and to stand up against every action which he finds irrational and illegal.

In a place where there are humans, there is someone to talk to. Therefore, we ask to create a dialogue that goes beyond the power struggle, the retaliation and one-sided attrition actions; to disprove the “No Partner” myth, which is leading to a lose-lose situation of an ongoing frustration, and to move to more humane methods.

We cannot hurt in the name of defense or imprison in the name of freedom; therefore we cannot be moral and serve the occupation.

In her declaration of refusal Mia Tamarin (picture to left) stated:

“I have no doubt that I should be serving my country, I have been doing so in many ways from a very young age, and intend of course to continue doing so, not out of compulsion but fully and truly of my own will. I cannot become part of an organization the purpose of which is to fend off violence by violence, because it stands unequivocally contrary to everything I believe in and to my whole life. There always is another, non-violent option, and it is this option that I choose.”

Send your letter of support here.

Further Reading:

Looking to the Future: Investing in our Youth as a Form of Effective Resistance