Refusal to serve on the West Bank
Ophir, Adi
We have received a copy of the following letter written by Professor Adi Ophir, who teaches philosophy at the Tel Aviv University, and we print it here for the information of our readers....
...I am fully aware of the serious implications of refusing military orders in general, and in the IDF in particular...
...Rabin, is also justified today because you and your fellow ministers no longer offer sufficient guarantees that we will stop this downward race before we hit rock bottom...
...Therefore, when you come to justify my orders to report for duty, you will be unable to speak in the name of democracy either...
...Palestinian hostility toward Zionism has been long-standing, deeply rooted and dangerous, and must be reckoned with in any future negotiations...
...Yitzhak Rabin Minister of Defense Hakirya, Tel Aviv Dear Sir, Tomorrow, on the 27th of June 1988, I will report to my regular artillery unit for Reserve Duty...
...From several statements made by you recently, it emerges that, just like some generals in dictatorial regimes sponsored by the United States, you, too, employ the concept of human rights and limits on the use of force merely as code words to avoid possible American pressure...
...The boundaries between preventative and punitive action have been obscured...
...and in the name of Israeli democracy...
...26 June 1988 Mr...
...Permit me to present my reasons...
...I know that refusal, were it to become a widespread phenomenon, could seriously damage the resilience of the IDF and the cohesion of Israeli society...
...Until you have, with serious intent, opened legitimate roads for a political struggle to achieve these ends, you have no right, Mr...
...You call on me to enforce "Law and Order" over a population which seven months ago launched a rebellion against Israeli rule...
...But your hands, Mr...
...Given the current political situation, all the arguments in support of your demand are invalid...
...Under the present circumstances you are not calling on me to defend Israel's security but to participate in the ongoing enslavement of another people...
...It is in this concert of evil, in which potential performers might find themselves committing war crimes, that I have been called to participate...
...In the face of popular Palestinian resistance, the IDF, under your leadership, is employing a series of repressive measures which will weigh on national Jewish memory and conscience for many years to come...
...It is your right according to law, but not according to justice, to instruct my commander to sentence me to prison for refusing a command...
...I have given it much thought over a long period of time, and will carry it out with a heavy heart...
...It is your duty, according to both law and justice, to reexamine the direction you are leading the army—in which people such as myself turn into "refuseniks...
...Minister, to call on me to enforce law and order among the Palestinian people...
...in the name of the law—which in this case is represented by you...
...A continuum of injustice is being carried out, ranging from the vigilantism of the settlers, to soldiers acting out of line, to those who daily imprison dozens of persons without due process...
...Nevertheless, I shall refuse...
...Our refusal is an attempt to find a foothold and hammer a stake onto the slippery slope between democracy and another form of government...
...Minister, follows from the values which are the basis of every enlightened rule of law...
...I hereby inform you that, regretfully, I will be unable to agree to take part in this mission, and for the first time in almost twenty years of regular and reserve duty in a combat unit, I am compelled to disobey an order...
...No one is more aware than you that we are ruling their lives through the continual denial of basic human rights and without granting them a share in self-government...
...Refusal becomes not only the courageous act of "noble souls"—although it is that too, and I am proud of it—but a uniquely responsible way, almost the only one possible nowadays, of participating in Israeli society...
...Adi Ophir Jerusalem q 486 • DISSENT...
...Between the time you served as prime minister and until you took on the Defense portfolio, this situation has become permanent, and nothing has remained of Israeli democracy save the pretense of the parliamentary game within the Green Line...
...Recognizing the authority of the rule of law, on the 27th of June 1988, I shall appear at a trial ready to accept my judgment...
...EDS...
...Today, you demand that I disassociate from this code of conduct and ignore these fundamental duties in the name of "national security" —for which you are responsible...
...Like its predecessors, this government leaves the Palestinians with no recourse but to use nonpolitical means to win freedom and to realize their right to national self-determination...
...Under your command, and to the tempo set by your baton, the IDF is acting in the Territories in accordance with orders, some of which are patently illegal...
...Our mission, according to the summons in my possession, is to perform police duties in the West Bank, which include "contact with the local population...
...Again and again, exaggerated force is used .gainst perpetrators of disorder, children are asphyxiated by "tear gas," infants hit by rubber bullets have lost their eyesight...
...Human rights are violated daily in a casual manner in the shadow of the system and by it, in the twilight zone between law and order that has been created by the government of Occupation on the far side of the Green Line, and which is rapidly spreading over this side of the border...
...Today you and the regime of Occupation, of which you are one of the leaders, are more dangerous to the rule of law than a mass movement of "refuseniks" would be, should it come into existence...
...Collective punishment, which does grave injustice to innocent people, is a routine practice...
...You are party to a government which, along the lines set by predecessors, continues to maintain and eternalize the Occupation, not to terminate it...
...Because of all these reasons, even the need to protect the rule of law cannot justify calling me to duty...
...If the government of Israel was sincerely striving to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and end the Occupation, if it did not systematically ignore the signs and signals of increased moderation and willingness to compromise coming from various quarters on the Palestinian side, it could be argued that the Occupation, even having lost all semblance of "enlightenment," is a necessary evil...
...With respect, Dr...
...The continued occupation is far more threatening to Israeli democracy than my own refusal to serve, or the past or future refusal of my friends...
...I will refuse because you, sir, and the government in which you serve, leave me no alternative...
...Under the aegis of rubber bullets, gas grenades and live ammunition which you want to place in my hands tomorrow, Israeli democracy is controlling the lives of one and a half million Palestinians...
...Even this pretense is crumbling before our very eyes, and you are fully responsible for this through the advanced training you provided to the IDF in the techniques of mass detention and collective punishment, with the Security Service behind the scenes, and the concurrent moral obtuseness overlying all...
...My decision to refuse is not frivolous...
...But after twenty-one years of Occupation, even though some voices calling for the destruction of Israel can still be heard, the Palestinian rebellion is a fight for freedom, whose only aim is release from Israeli rule...
...We are still far from the bottom of this decline, but we are rapidly nearing it...
...Our act marks a boundary of the erosion of the lines that distinguish between a society whose laws express human transcendence and a society whose laws manifest the basest human elements...
...and the direction you are leading the country—which people like myself serve by refusing to participate in the army of Occupation...
...Minister, are not clean...
...My refusal, Mr...
...Thousands of persons have been punished arbitrarily without recourse to the standard due process found in societies under proper guidance...
...My refusal, Mr...
...For myself, and my FALL • 1988 • 485 Communications friends who have refused or will refuse to serve, these concepts are the fundamental requirements for life in a democratic society and guide the conduct of individuals within it...
...For the first time since the Six Day War, Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation has become a systematic struggle in which most of the Palestinian population is involved...
...If you were to come with a clean conscience and state on behalf of this government that the current acts of oppression, and the Occupation in general, are temporary, to be maintained only until an agreement is reached, you could argue that national security justifies the orders I have received to serve in the occupying force...
...As the process of oppression gains momentum, the constraints and controls of democracy grow weaker...
Vol. 35 • September 1988 • No. 4
