EUROPEAN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY-NEW PROBLEMS, NEW PROSPECTS: WAR RESISTERS IN THE LAND OF BATTLE
Glazer, Penina Migdal & Glazer, Myron
L egally, Israeli conscientious objectors have no official status. They fall under a broad statute that allows the Ministry of Defense to deal with special cases and to declare such people unfit...
...His case was especially difficult because of the seeming inconsistencies in his record...
...The Path of Political Resistance GIORA NEUMAN is Israel's best-known war resister...
...Who are the War Resisters...
...This quiet, shy young man got into arguments for the first time...
...When the Six-Day War broke out in June 1967, he was unwilling to fight but saw few alternatives...
...Petitions for humane treatment arrived, not only from famous international figures such as Jean-Paul Sartre, but also from some Israelis who agreed that he had been in prison long enough...
...Uri went on a hunger strike and ultimately received an exemption after submitting to a psychiatric examination...
...One can't imagine such things in the U.S...
...Uri's family was mortified by his imprisonment...
...The kind talks were always mixed with threats from the colonel, a huge man whom Giora found physically terrifying...
...The trio agreed that finding a way out of army service was both necessary and feasible...
...army...
...Furthermore, Avram made his stand alone...
...A resolution regarding his military status still had to be reached, and lengthy negotiation ensued before the general who was representing the army and Giora Neuman could come to mutually acceptable terms...
...Nevertheless, the case of Avram reveals some interesting aspects of Israeli military interaction with conscientious objectors...
...The government and the people had come to believe that naked power—the big fist—could solve its international problems...
...They received us warmly and expressed interest in Penina's earlier work on American resisters...
...Many officers treated him with kindness...
...The army is mandated by the society to incorporate everyone into the defense of the nation...
...Hassling with the bureaucracy is a standard topic of conversation...
...Natan Chofshy went to Ben Gurion in 1948 to urge legal protection for objectors...
...O.K.," he said, "do what you want with me...
...The majority of the prisoners were men who had deserted or gone AWOL...
...Just before the trial, the army made one last effort to resolve the case...
...Several days after he failed to report, Israeli police came to his home...
...Because I do not doubt for one moment that the Arab leaders would destroy us if given a chance...
...Since there is no institutionalized procedure, the first line of defense on the part of the military is usually an attempt to win over the conscientious objector and find a place for him within the system...
...He trembled as he told about a fight where a fellow soldier slapped him as a result of a discussion of how many men had died...
...His wife and a friend both feel he had developed feelings of self-importance--or even chauvinism—during the 1973 war...
...584-603...
...After gaining understanding from the officer in charge of his unit, Uri soon learned that even a medic must be trained to handle weapons...
...By the time Giora was called to military duty in 1971, he was an active member of Matzpen, a small anti-Zionist, Marxist group...
...But if lengthy conversations do not produce reconciliation, punishment must follow...
...It was a horrible time for him...
...At the end of the 35 days, Giora was brought back to the base for a heart-to-heart discussion with a colonel who fascinated Giora by acting like a father and trying to understand his views...
...This argument was followed by a concrete offer to join this officer's unit as a researcher...
...As Giora's prison stays multiplied, his 292 incarceration became a national issue...
...THE RESISTERS, then, are unusual people, marginal to Israeli life yet very much a product of it...
...The officer will debate the merits of the critic's arguments honestly and openly—but he will never change his own mind on the fundamental point: Everyone has to serve.* From the time of its founding, Israel has refused to establish legal options of alternative service for COs...
...At times, officers even talk of having a bad conscience in administering jail sentences...
...For Giora, military prison represented the epitome of the military environment...
...This would be a good test...
...The case of Uri is poignant...
...Fearing that a long prison sentence might result if no accommodation could be reached, family, friends, and his attorney urged Giora to find some way to come to terms with the military...
...On the fourth day of the war he went with an officer to bring supplies to the troops on the Sinai front...
...They were not given a bushel of forms to fill out...
...One key sentence was meant to draw on an important Jewish motif: We cannot serve in an army of conquest because our fathers suffered so much from armies of conquest...
...The commander was known as a civil libertarian who had good credentials with many radicals...
...Totally unlike its American counterpart, the Israeli university student body is comprised of veterans working full or part time, veterans who do reserve duty in addition to managing their jobs and families...
...Uri had put the figure at 20,000 because he included 18,000 Arabs...
...As the trial approached, Giora became concerned that a compromise solution might give the public the impression that his primary concern was to gain an advantageous position for himself...
...Eight of these were Jehovah's Witnesses, a small group that has been especially vulnerable...
...For Giora Neuman, 1967 to '73 were the crucial years...
...On the other hand, he now feels that the Yom Kippur War has led Israelis to raise so many questions about the army that resistance to military service is less necessary than other, more effective means of public protest...
...It was obvious that the two of them could come to no mutually acceptable resolution...
...Why do I fight then...
...Petitions for his release were signed by academics, members of Hashomer Hatzair and others who disagreed with his actions but felt he should not be persecuted for conscientious objection...
...Uri was given the job of athletic trainer for soldiers, and his brother made certain that the officer-in-charge didn't give him a rifle...
...As he came to feel more alienated, he defined more and more military decisions as incompetent and provocative, based on internal political needs rather than external threats...
...If not, he argued, they will be subject to the arbitrariness of each officer...
...The Path of Accommodation AVRAM had been an officer in the army...
...Since he and his friends had little feeling of loyalty to the nation, they were willing to use means to evade service that other resisters shunned...
...They appealed to him as a professional, a role in which he functions successfully in Israeli society...
...Until he was 17 years old, Uri never thought much about pacifism although he had become a vegetarian for health and conscience reasons 293 several years earlier...
...He was offered two combat-related positions despite his declaration that he would do only humanitarian work...
...Clearly impressed, Avram agreed to a trial invitation to see what the unit was like...
...As of December 1975, the Israeli section of the War Resisters League had information about the imprisonment of 17 resisters who, they charged, were serving longer sentences and receiving harsh treatment...
...Unlike in the United States, there is no multitude of little magazines writing about unpopular ideas...
...One officer came to Uri's house to help him avoid further imprisonment...
...Avram agreed to serve in the unit, and now has been on this assignment for all his reserve duty...
...Uri knew he was now AWOL but he simply didn't want to have anything more to do with the military...
...Send the MPs...
...If resistance developed anywhere in the occupied territories, he said, Israeli officials retaliated by blowing up houses...
...The others who had been called earlier resisted for a short time and were unable to continue, each of them reaching an agreement with the military...
...289 any defense in its behalf...
...During 1975 he was imprisoned for 35 days...
...When Uri arrived at the scout unit, he was immediately given a rifle, and his fellow soldiers were totally unsympathetic when they realized that he would not fire his weapon...
...Even more recently, at the time of the Vietnam War, resisters received two- to five-year terms...
...Four potential recruits wrote an open letter to the Minister of Defense explaining their unwillingness to serve...
...Describing the classification unit as big and confusing ("it was easy to get lost in the shuffle"), Uri became timid when he should have been assertive...
...A tank driver who had fought in some of the bloodiest battles of the Yom Kippur War captured the essence of this position: Of course, I am critical of the government...
...The Path of Evasion RONNI, OLGA, AND DAVID were waiting for us...
...I come from Hashomer Hatzair...
...He presented the situation very clearly...
...290 Within a few months he was routinely called for reserve duty...
...By contrast, the major U.S...
...Their ideals led them to reject a future in business or public life, and their ultimate intention was to leave Israel permanently to live in a country where conscription and war would not dominate their lives...
...They have few places to turn to for advice and counsel...
...Frequently, a radical officer is the one to undertake this task, pointing out that the Israeli army is a citizens' army with as many officers from leftwing kibbutzim as from right-wing militaristic groups...
...Despite some help from family and a very few friends, most war resisters who confront the military are isolated...
...It was agreed he would work, without weapons or uniform, in a civilian hospital for three years...
...Israel itself they found to be oppressive and authoritarian...
...A country in continual danger had better not legitimize resistance to its national defense policies or opposition to its fundamental premise that there is no choice—everyone must fight...
...The Pacifist Path PACIFIST CONFRONTATION with the military, unlike political war resistance, does not necessarily occur because the pacifists are interested in challenging Israel's foreign policy...
...The same classifying officer was there, but this time accompanied by the chief commander of a special unit...
...Given 40 days of probation for his failure to take the tests, Uri was sent back to the classification unit to begin basic training again...
...But all the officer said was "Beseder [O.K...
...However helpful and gratifying this support was, it did dilute the original protest Giora had set out to make, by ignoring or rejecting the substance of his political argument and focusing attention on excessive punishment...
...His mother came to visit, but after Uri saw how ashamed she was, he told her not to come again...
...For the first time his brother was convinced that Uri was sincere...
...O.K.," said the pacifist...
...Finally, the colonel suggested that they might resolve the problem amicably by offering Giora a comfortable position in the army...
...When his prison term ended, he was sent back for reclassification and basic training...
...Israel is famous for its unwieldy bureaucracy...
...The flexibility on the part of army officials succeeded because Avram was not an absolutist...
...He no longer was a passive critic but an activist prepared to confront military authority...
...They were mostly lower-class (Middle Eastern) Sephardic Jews, who found it difficult to understand what Giora was doing there...
...The agreed-upon subject would be: "Israel's military-industrial complex...
...Whether or not Israeli war resisters will meet this challenge is still unknown...
...When Giora refused, the colonel became furious and sentenced him to another 35 days, and this occurred five more times—jail, conversation with the colonel, a new 35-day sentence...
...He reported at the proper hour but told the officer in charge that he would not go...
...His brother had left his name on the roster of the scout unit, and Uri was still officially classified as a fighter...
...He was referred to another officer who sentenced him to 35 days in jail, the maximum sentence permitted without trial...
...He had been wounded once and several of his friends had been killed...
...Uri was judged as absent without leave rather than on grounds of conscience and was sentenced to 50 days' imprisonment, a harsh sentence by Israeli standards...
...Giora objected to the political atmosphere, which he characterized as "arrogant...
...One of his strongest doubts about his decision to resist arises from his feeling that he has lost the right to criticize what he did not defend...
...Do something or I'll go to jail...
...It is the sort of intolerance that made an old man on a bus berate a war resister whose picture he had seen in the paper...
...He was young and inexperienced and he made a serious mistake—he simply ran away from the base and went home...
...Instead, fatherly officers were brought in to discuss the resister's position...
...Israel's victory in the Six-Day War led it to act, he felt, like a mini-empire in the Middle East...
...I have been in the States for several years, have changed my opinions, and am now a conscientious objector...
...Avram would be able to do whatever research he wanted...
...Some have fairly well-developed political ideologies...
...Even in Giora Neuman's case, which particularly angered the Israeli establishment, there was a series of last-ditch efforts—hours of long 295 conversation to try and change his mind...
...By their actions and ideas they can contribute to a culture of dissent and they can fight for legal options for minorities...
...Finally, the military decided to have a regular trial, and Giora's parents convinced him to retain a defense attorney...
...Avram had two possible choices: one led to jail where very little would be accomplished...
...A good officer can, in fact, have considerable influence...
...people have always wanted to kill the Jews and still do...
...As he turned 18, Uri began having doubts about Israel's attitudes toward the Arabs...
...The Determined Few ISRAEL HAS a very small number of war resisters...
...See Penina Migdal Glazer, "From the Old Left to the New: Radical Criticism in the 1940's," American Quarterly, Winter 1972, pp...
...Most of those we located and others we heard about are Sabras (native born), middle-class, of Ashkenazi (European) background.* Their reasons for resistance range from absolute belief in nonviolence to selective objection for political purposes...
...The army is the least criticized institution in the society, much less authoritarian than the political parties, and the most tolerant of different ideas...
...The prison was dirty and rat-infested, characterized, he said, by shouting, yelling, inhumane treatment of people...
...The review was quite routine for the vast majority and resulted in continued exemption for most persons...
...He is less comfortable with his earlier definition of Israel as an aggressive nation...
...After his discharge, he went to the university and became active in student politics...
...There is, nonetheless, a tension that is irresolvable...
...Sign here, sign there . ." Forewarned about this tactic, Giora refused...
...He went along willingly and they treated him quite well...
...Feeling alone, broken, and unable to face another prison experience, Uri accepted with resignation his brother's offer to arrange a transfer to his own scout unit...
...He observed the destruction of several Arab villages near Jerusalem for what were defined as security reasons, and he wondered about the legitimacy of such action...
...His brother was a major, and his family simply assumed that he too would have a distinguished service career...
...By American standards, even the harshest jail sentences were mild...
...The military, for its part, refused to define his work stint officially as alternative service...
...After this experience in the U.S., Avram returned to Israel with a graduate degree, a responsible position, and new political energies...
...To incorporate this wide spectrum of views, there appears to be almost a familial orientation...
...Giora saw us in the evenings, after completing his alternative service work in a 291 hospital outside Tel Aviv...
...The discussion lasted six or seven hours with Giora ultimately rejecting the appeal...
...Ronni apologized for the condition of the apartment...
...others are critical of recent Israeli policies but vague on alternatives...
...He was not emotionally moved by the unification of the city, but felt, rather, that the great loss of life and the way the attack was handled confirmed his antimilitary ideas...
...The other led to the army, which is not unattractive...
...A quick glance yielded clues about the ethos of the three young people...
...After the war, the nation was triumphant but Avram felt great despair...
...Again, Avram felt that he had made an impact...
...Their isolation and small number make their task difficult, yet the willingness of some to sacrifice for principles they hold may ultimately contribute to Israel's search for a better national life...
...When he was convinced that the army was diverse enough to offer him an opportunity to make his views known, he agreed to serve...
...If a resister is willing to compromise, as in Avram's case, accommodation is possible...
...Their impact on society has to be regarded in other terms...
...As a result of his good relationship with the officer, Uri managed to avoid some of the gun training, but in the end he refused to take the final tests involving the use of weapons...
...They embodied a style of life that would not have been at all unusual for parts of Greenwich Village or Haight Ashbury in the 1960s but was distinctly anomalous for contemporary Israel...
...Another pacifist called his officer a few hours after he was due to report and said, "I'm not coming...
...He felt guilty and useless while his brother and friends were fighting and dying...
...He was not yet sure which method he would choose but was certain he could find a means to avoid conscription...
...Induction dates varied for the four resisters, and this proved important for Giora Neuman's subsequent behavior...
...In World War I, United States courts issued life terms for conscientious objectors...
...They included draft cards and distributed copies of the letter to the daily newspapers...
...The entire experience was traumatic for him—the cemeteries of tanks, the endless dead bodies...
...You're not going to jail so fast...
...Deferments because of other study, critical occupations, or minor physical disabilities are rare...
...Earlier, he had been unwilling to accept a medical exemption because he felt it compromised his principles...
...After the cease=fire was declared, Uri moved from unit to unit supervising physical exercise for soldiers...
...He is a radical critic who resisted in order to oppose Israeli policies...
...Imprisonment is often interrupted by new efforts and negotiations to achieve compromise— sometimes successfully...
...I no longer have anything to lose...
...I'll go to jail...
...In practice, exemptions are rare...
...He felt that many of these deaths and injuries were unnecessary...
...Giora believed such protest challenged the ideological underpinnings of the society and thus would anger the establishment...
...Rather, pacifists clash with the military when it is unwilling to accept the claim that conscience will not allow the bearing of arms...
...Uri had to know what war is...
...We cannot live in an ivory tower while we work and hope for peace...
...At the induction base, the officer in charge tried to ignore the special circumstances of his case and attempted to rush him through the procedure...
...The young men's bearded faces, the faded dungarees, the frequent talk of drugs, all testified to a countercultural bent...
...All went smoothly until the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War...
...Uri's father and brother said they never wanted to see him again, and his girlfriend left him...
...And now Giora's only current contact with the military is in the form of a small monthly paycheck...
...Giora submitted a carefully worded statement, focusing on his objection to conquest of the territories...
...Perhaps he might even become an officer...
...The hostile reaction from the audience convinced him he had made his point...
...This time Uri went to his brother and appealed for help...
...Newspaper reaction was much more vehement: editorials portrayed them as hippies, kooks, agents of Fatah, or opportunists looking for a soft deal...
...They seemed to enjoy the friendship of a middle-class Ashkenazi Jew (of European origins) although they never understood his politics...
...He was the last called...
...He was promilitary in the automatic way that a son of an old Israeli family will be so...
...Another arrangement was made...
...policy-makers: the rights of COs and other war resisters are not to be institutionalized...
...They avoided ideological polemics and focused their criticism on the Israeli occupation...
...Not having a reference group of like-minded people who had a stake in his decision made it easier for him to compromise...
...He was known as a maverick—a radical in a conservative student body...
...He continues to believe he is doing good on his own terms, although the Yom Kippur War raised basic questions about his political beliefs...
...It made another man try to prevent a vendor from selling a sandwich to a conscientious objector whom he recognized in downtown Tel-Aviv...
...As they expected, the draft cards were returned by the Ministry with a form letter, which simply stated that the law obliged them to serve in the armed forces...
...universities, at least in the late 1960s, were the locus of many groups that were challenging political, social, and cultural ideas...
...In Israel the terms were two weeks to a year...
...Ben Gurion refused, as have all subsequent *Indeed, in December 1974 the military authorities began a review of all persons who held exemption cards...
...They fall under a broad statute that allows the Ministry of Defense to deal with special cases and to declare such people unfit to serve...
...They told Giora they had done so to earn money or to help their families in other ways...
...In those hard days, he had no support...
...This tiny group represents the most extreme point of alienation...
...The establishment of the State of Israel, they believed, deprived Palestinians of their home, ending possibilities for both groups to coexist in peace...
...The intervention of his officer had shielded him from harsher punishment...
...Officers of radical credentials try to convince critical young men to change their minds...
...There is very little likelihood that pacifists or even political resisters will have any serious impact on the political or military policies of Israel...
...The army is often willing to be flexible, to find room for nonconformists, especially where public confrontation can be avoided...
...One former pacifist summarized the view of most critics when he said, "I have come to the conclusion that pacifism is too great a luxury for this nation...
...As outsiders they have the leisure to experiment with new ideas, solutions, and strategies that may pave the way for future agents of political change...
...I don't have an MP available...
...In an attempt to avoid this, he set down his conditions for resolution: (1) he would not take the military oath because it required unconditional loyalty to the Ministry of Defense, (2) he would not bear arms, (3) but he would be willing to do alternative service for the good of the country...
...The history of European nations or of the United States shows few instances in which military or foreign policy was directly influenced by resisters...
...Methods of resistance vary from evasion to accommodation to direct confrontation...
...Three days later a soldier came for him...
...Where were you when we needed you...
...Yet the absence of a system of alternate service falls hardest on young men like him, willing to serve their country but bound by conscience to those activities that they believe are nonviolent...
...Realizing that he might well end up in jail, Avram and his wife said good-bye...
...Come back with me...
...If he were to maintain his pacifist position, he knew he would probably be resentenced...
...In Israel, the university is an avenue of social mobility and technical preparation, but not a center for political activity or even for a youth subculture that can experiment with political ideas...
...War Resisters International Israeli Section, communication of Dec...
...The desire to leave the door open for further negotiation was another major reason for the court to decide on this relatively light sentence...
...He stood waiting for the dramatic confrontation...
...another was to gain an exemption for drug use...
...He escaped from the Egyptian side of the canal, which was still held by the Israelis, and hitched back home...
...the time he had already spent in prison and good behavior time were to be taken into account so that only one or two months remained...
...I don't believe they are doing enough to achieve peace...
...He decided to resist reserve duty in order to demonstrate his belief that the army had no right to administer the occupied territories and that Israel should withdraw from them...
...The army is a people's army and everyone is in it—left, center, right...
...According to Ronni, in this highly stratified society socialist ideals were a joke...
...People like you should be in the army," he argued, "it should not be abandoned to rightwingers...
...Fine...
...I cannot shoot a gun...
...How would the head of the unit respond now that he had heard Avram's material...
...He was sentenced, much to everyone's surprise, to only eight months in jail...
...The War Resisters League —Israel's one pacifist organization—is not well-known, remains divided and inactive...
...Rising to speak at a political party meeting of left-wing doves, he was immediately shouted down with cries of "You have no right to speak, you didn't serve...
...Avram was particularly attracted by university people who combined professional rigor and success with political radicalism...
...In basic training he decided that he would not be a fighter but would serve only as a medic...
...One young man, imprisoned when he refused to do reserve duty in the occupied territories and out of the country during the Yom Kippur War, experienced the never-ending debt of resistance...
...He signed the loyalty oath, which had been a point of great contention, and appended another paragraph disassociating himself from unconditional loyalty to the Minister of Defense...
...296...
...As Americans, we were impressed by the relatively direct way in which so many resisters were treated...
...The great confrontation hadn't come, and his relief was clearly mixed with disappointment...
...Whether absolute pacifists or not, all become war resisters by virtue of refusing military conscription...
...The commander invited him to lecture on repression and indoctrination to a group of army psychiatrists...
...In his intense, articulate manner, he explained that they had been very busy and had not found time to clean up...
...The mattresses on the floor were virtually all the furniture in this small fourth-floor walkup in downtown Tel Aviv...
...Not all cases of resistance work out so smoothly...
...After completion of their service, men have to do 40 days of reserve duty each year...
...He told us that he liked his assignment and believed he was doing an important job, but feels he has remained basically alienated from Israeli society...
...Still, he went into the army as a matter of course...
...For Ronni, one possibility was to have himself declared psychologically unfit...
...Military service is an obligation for all men and women at age 18, except for Orthodox women and men studying at a yeshivah...
...Uri felt the fear of the instant before death...
...Most Israelis did not anticipate the quick and dramatic victory that followed the outbreak of hostilities on June 5. As events were mounting to a climax, Avram was mobilized and fought in the battle for Jerusalem...
...They'll send you to jail...
...But his problems with the army were not yet over...
...To resist the draft or reserve duty is to defy a call to service that has the support of Israel's overwhelming majority, which draws one conclusion from recent history: Ein Breirathere is no choice...
...But this is not the case in the military's treatment of war resisters...
...This process, however, reopened the cases of a number of objectors and resulted in further confrontation with the authorities...
...Neuman believes that his knowledge of what had happened to his friends enabled him to prepare himself for the shock of confrontation...
...Two months passed before he was recalled...
...He made clear from the outset that, far from being a pacifist, his resistance is rooted in criticism of Israeli foreign policy...
...The pressure to conform breeds an intolerance against war resisters...
...Nevertheless, Uri now refused outright to handle weapons and reiterated his stand that he would do only noncombat work...
...he still had to confront his reserve obligation...
...Here are four cases that seem representative...
...As anarchists, these young people were totally opposed to the State of Israel and to *We were greatly assisted in our efforts to locate resisters by members of the Israeli section of the War Resisters League, particularly Joseph Abileah and Yesheahu Shick...
...He and his wife soon left for graduate study in the United States, where they remained for several years...
...The commander invited him to give a second lecture to majors and lieutenant colonels...
...He and several friends of similar political persuasion decided to refuse induction...
...Uri agreed and finished the last months of his service in a nonfighting unit...
...Here, for the first time, he was exposed to a group of radicals whose ideas were similar to his own...
...Resisters' experience with the military, on the other hand, is not consistent with the social isolation and cultural intolerance they experience in everyday encounters in the civilian world...
...His experience had left 294 him in a state of shock and he felt he had to get away...
...The final resolution, Giora explained, was typically Israeli...
...Like many Israelis, he is active in minorityparty politics and promoting more peace initiatives, yet he no longer separates himself from the majority by refusing to serve...
...Could you come down here yourself...
...Go home now and we'll call you later...
...This kind of talk was not accepted by soldiers in the heat of battle...
...Only in strength is safety...
...The court's leniency was partially the result of the trial's having been altered from a political trial to a humanitarian cause...
...Avram gave a lecture designed to shock those "square shrinks...
...After a few days his commanding officer, who was home on leave, came to Uri's house and said, "What are you doing...
...I am a Marxist too...
...The atmosphere at the trial was not emotional, and there were few quarrels about the issues...
...He went without a gun and on his own responsibility...
...Fifty kilometers before Suez the Egyptians strafed the convoy...
...As we shall see in the next two cases, where professional or familial relationships do remain important, that the course of resistance can be quite different...
...Do me a favor," the officer replied...
...In retrospect, Giora believes he did the right thing because the military needed to have its supremacy challenged...
...They were not worried about bad publicity, future career opportunities, or effects on family or friends...
...Giora felt that the prosecutor did not show any personal hatred...
...Avram worked out a deal with a friend who was wellplaced in the military and who agreed that he would mobilize Avram only if the situation became serious...
...On the first day of the war he was in Beersheva and helped carry the wounded from the helicopters to the hospital...
...31, 1975...
...He does not reject Israel or his family...
...The chief education officer, a general with a left-wing background, appealed to Giora Neuman as a friend...
...He saw no hope in a situation in which there were no dissenters to the prevailing mood of "might equals right," and he found other young people apathetic and opportunistic, totally insensitive to the exploitation of Israeli Arabs and lower-class Jews...
...but events from that point on began to control him...
...Avram was impressed with the cleverness of the army...
...Friends and allies, Israelis feel, can turn on you any time...
Vol. 24 • July 1977 • No. 3
