Israel's Conscientious Objectors

By Uri Avnery

Some years ago, when the jury for the annual Israel Prize announced its award to Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, I decided to invite him to give a lecture to the Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace, the group that established the first contacts with the PLO.

"I am ready to come," he said, "on one condition: I shall speak only about the duty to refuse to serve in the occupied territories." For him, that was the alpha and omega of the fight against the occupation.

I told him that he was free to speak about whatever he saw fit, even if I myself did not quite share his view.

(The lecture, by the way, had an unexpected result. In his usual provocative style, Leibowitz compared the Special Units of the Israeli army to the Nazi SS. His words were published, aroused a storm of protest and the prize jury wanted to cancel the award, whereupon Leibowitz himself announced that he refused it.)

Since then I had an ongoing debate with myself about this hard and painful subject.

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http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery12292003.html

When he writes, I learn.

thanks for posting

And two of his points about why he'd had reservations in the past encouraging Israelis to become conscientious objectors were ones that had occured to me as well:

"Second, you legitimise the same actions by your opponents. According to the "categorical imperative" of Immanuel Kant, you have to behave "as if the principle by which you act were about to be turned into a universal law of nature". If A has the right to refuse to serve the occupation, B has the right to refuse to remove settlements.

Third, you corrupt the army. If all moral people leave the army, it will remain in the hands of the immoral ones. The checkpoints will be manned exclusively by Arab-haters, operations will be executed by sadists. But if the decent people remain in the army, they can influence its spirit, preventing by their very presence injustices and atrocities, or, at least, bringing them to light."


Violet...