against conscription
נגד שירות חובה
Aya Kaniuk


'Physicians for Human Rights' held a press conference at the Ambassador Hotel in Jerusalem. The theme at hand was the pressure that Israel applies to cancer and other patients in severe condition in Gaza through its General Security Services (Shabaq), The aim is to force them to collaborate with the occupation regime against their own people, in return for the possibility to exit Gaza for medical treatment.

The mere thought is unbearable. A person hooked up to tubes, perhaps dying, desperately needy of treatment unavailable in Gaza, is en route to Egypt or Jordan or Israel. At the checkpoint, he/she or a relative is taken to a side room where a Shabaq agent will place his outrageous demand in return for the permission to exit.
Refusal to cooperate will send the patient back, in many cases to a certain death.

We were there at that press conference. The people present were speaking Arabic, English and French and German and Spanish. Not a single Jewish-Israeli journalist. Or so it appeared. Obviously there were some who had wanted to attend but couldn't. A certain journalist intended to join us there but couldn't on that particular day, and he did write about the occasion, but then he is one of the 'damned', anyway. How – I wondered – could they not be crowding in here around this issue? After all, even if they think it's another one of those
slanderous rumors about Israel and its ways, even if they think this could not really be happening, they are – after all – journalists. They are supposed to be the ones who monitor power, who strive for truth, who place knowledge and the right to know above all other considerations. And after all, we are talking here about an act which, if it does indeed take place, is of the utmost journalistic importance.

Some of those who did not show up obtained their information from Reuters news agency, some read the report on the internet. And indeed, some mention was made of this in the local media, in flat complacency.

The possibility that Israel, officially, openly, murders patients suffering excruciatingly from diseases if they refuse to betray their own people, has not generated any public uproar or even discussion. Hardly any Jewish-Israeli journalists have considered this to be news-worthy.

I believe that the real reason for which they did not show up at the press conference, and wrote what and if they did, is part of the answer to the question: how such criminal policy can be implemented so easily and in such overriding silence in a state not subjected to dictatorship, nor infused with censorship, where no journalists are at any real risk if they report things against current government policy.
And my argument is that this is all because of conscription - mandatory army service. For they too have served their duty in the armed forces.

Military service, instated in 1953, turned all civilians into an inseparable part of state policy. State is no longer an abstract term, differentiated from the individual.
The acts of state take place through the individual: his hands are besmirched with the blood shed by the act of the state.

Initiation rites rampant in the mafia and other groups (who act with institutionalized violence that usually does not adhere to common values, and at times is even illegal) exist, among other things, to ensure that the novice entering their ranks will be branded with the stamp of belonging.
The trial or ceremony usually involves committing a crime. Thus, the person accepted into the group has already violated some law in its name.
From that moment on, his loyalty is ensured.
For casting a critical look at the group would mean looking at himself, taking a risk.
His sense of belonging, obedience and silence are ensured.
 

"But someone has to do it" say the Jewish-Israeli parents who send their offspring to the army year after year, generation after generation. "Our enemies have designs to destroy us", and "it is no theoretical matter here", and "the whole world is against us", and "we're all better off if it's my son in there, and not some…", for "this is my country", and "I am duty-bound even if I don't see eye to eye with the present policy", and "what would happen if the really bad guys were to get here" – say others.

Even without questioning the extent of truth in the Jewish-Israeli Zionist version of reality, let us assume that the political and historical situation were exactly as they are now, with the exception that military service were not mandatory.
Would parents still be repeating religiously, "One does need an army, after all", and "better my son there than some…"? Would they still want him to defend the homeland, protect the home, will they say that there is really no other choice, while his peers will be doing other things with their lives?

The answer is no. If joining the army were not mandatory, even in similar circumstances, parents would not necessarily want their children to join the army.
But why not? one must ask. After all, one does need an army – they said so themselves – and someone has to do it, and better their son than… Why then, if not everyone goes, if it's not a duty, do these arguments lose their validity?
They no longer hold because they have not been the real motive all along. They are merely the clichés provided by our culture to name the conformist urge - that is unavoidably human,
and not only in the negative sense.

Perhaps because joining the army as a mandatory service is the most prominent Israeli rite of initiation par excellence. If no longer practiced by one and all, it would cease to be that. When its mythical, symbolic dimensions are shifted towards the concrete, many will justly say – why should I waste the best years of my young life on this of all things.
 

Military service in the Wehrmacht, founded in 1935, was mandatory. Youngsters were enlisted in its ranks under state law. They, too, as customary everywhere under mandatory service laws, enlisted regardless of the act of their state, and believed – one assumes – that this is what must be done. For it is mandatory. They and their parents.

Do any one of those who argue that such 'service' should be fulfilled regardless of the act of state, think that – had they and their sons lived then and there – they would have done their duty in the Wehrmacht?
They would probably deny vehemently, saying that 'No, that is something else altogether. After all, those people back then committed war crimes, crimes against humanity. Acts to be condemned and shunned. Mandatory conscription does not apply for every army. Not that one, certainly. And ours is by far no Wehrmacht.'
But if duty is fulfilled because duty calls, and if service is mandatory and one goes regardless of the act of state, because an army is necessary, because "better my son than…", "'because it is the state", then why not the Wehrmacht? How can such duty possibly apply to the one army and not to the other?

"Still, in spite of possible imperfections, after all we are no pacifists and regardless of who is right or why people enlist, still we need an army." These words are uttered by individuals who, in fact, oppose their government's policy. And they continue to serve it, they and their sons.
A professional, lucrative army that would attract talents would no doubt be better than an army of volunteers few of whom possess a natural talent for the battles they are required to fight.
"But can a mercenary army be as loyal as a mandatory one?" they ask, justly. "For, as soon as military service is salaried, who would agree to risk their lives for pay?"
Many studies have shown that loyalty and willing to take risks in battle characterize mercenary soldiers throughout history, even foreigners, for whom the war at hand means nothing, personally - for example, and not the only one, the French Foreign Legion.
Apparently all soldiers, both mercenary and regulars, are motivated first and foremost by their kinship to their comrades-in-arms. Research has shown that mercenaries are no different from regular soldiers in their willingness to sacrifice themselves and commit acts of bravery.

So why maintain a regular (mandatory) army?

For if mandatory conscription were not imposed by law, the stamp of belonging to the act of their state would no longer remain whole. It would begin to crack and fall apart.
The act of state would become something the state does, rather than myself and my
son. Then, the automatic willingness of citizens to justify and agree to fulfill state policy regardless - would necessarily be lost as well. And politicians would be held accountable.

That is just what happened with the United States' invasion of Iraq. As there is no mandatory service, not every citizen served his state's policy, was not fated to serve it - neither they nor their sons and daughters. Thus, at least potentially, the crucial distance is maintained between the individual and the act of state. The state is not he. Not everything it does, he does. Therefore, he can examine it without fearing what will be said of him or his son.
And this indeed did happen. After the initial patriotic diatribes, and the lies spread by the powers that be, and the love of war that is there anyway, with time people began to question the justification for that war.
For only a small part of the public did 'serve' it. For what the state did it did in its name, through its professional army, and not through each and every one of its citizens. Thus, there was no problem to take another look at the state, with time, and say that it is criminal, immoral.

This is not what happened in the Lebanon war of summer 2006.
Most Israeli citizens (naturally, only of the sectors that are obliged by law to serve in the army) were not at all critical of waging this war against another nation. Quite the contrary.
Not only the general public, but most journalists as well. No official censorship is needed for Jewish-Israeli journalists to serve their government's policy and refuse to be critical. They will claim they are patriots and accept the state's position verbatim, although their professional future is at no risk if they pose questions and suspect the state's real motive and justification.
For they, too, were in the army. For this policy is them. For their sons are there. For looking at this policy from the side is looking at the mirror, and making harsh statements about the act of state, as long as military service is mandatory, is the same as saying "I and my son". It is like saying "I committed this. Not they, not the state. I myself." And that, of course, is the hardest nutshell of them all.

Compulsory military service is, then, Israel's most ingenious and terrible invention. Its role is to brand the state's Jewish residents with an immoral loyalty to the acts of their state, regardless. Its role is to blur the difference between acts of state and of the individual, to make them identical. What the state did was done by the private individual, everyman.

Just as limited as one is in naming his own and his children's deeds, so one is limited in his ability to name the acts of state.

That is why no dictatorship is needed in Israel, no military junta nor censorship, and no life-threat to hover over anyone who dare challenge the state – for the majority to obey, participate and keep silent when necessary.

In full view of the murdered cancer patients of Gaza, in view of the flagrant violence wreaked upon the Lebanese people, and in full view of all the other crimes against the Palestinian people, from then to now – all that is needed is mandatory military service.