CONSCIENCE POLICE
New Profile's anti-militarism in the dock
Over the years, more and more Israelis found ways to avoid military service. While those who
officially proclaimed their refusal and gave principled reasons would usually go to jail, a
considerably bigger number got out by all kinds of dodges and loopholes, and the military authorities
made no great effort to stop them -- reasoning pragmatically that they had enough unskilled (wo)
manpower and that those who try hard to avoid military service would not make good soldiers
anyway.
It seems that since the 2006 Lebanon War fiasco the army started to worry about the phenomenon.
Defence Minister Barak felt time had come for "action against shirkers who fail to do their duty for
the country", and the editors of Yediot Aharonot evidently considered the prominent publication of
such a call as boosting the paper's circulation.
A campaign was launched to deny lucrative state and municipal contracts to singers who had not
served in the army, considered as "cultural icons of the young." With some success, as several of
them backtracked and make their peace with the army.
Also, the army started to employ detectives to look into the private life of young women who had
obtained discharge from military service "on grounds of a religious way of life" (one of the ways out
set down in Israeli law). If proven to have worn "an immodest dress", kissed in public or spent the
night in the home of a boy friend, such a girl would be imperiously summoned and faced with the
demand of putting on a military uniform at once.
As part of these efforts, Brigadier General Mandelblitt of the Army's Judicial Branch formally
requested his civilian counterpart Menny Mazuz to initiate a criminal investigation against New
Profile: a Feminist organization set up ten years ago with the proclaimed aim of working to create a
true civil society and firmly oppose "the undue influence of the military on life in the
country."
Among other things, this includes the establishing and maintaining of a substantial network for
counseling and supporting youths facing conscription and not happy with the prospect -- for either
political reasons, personal ones, or both.
In September 2008 Mazuz duly instructed the police to open a criminal investigation against New
Profile, on charges of "promoting the avoidance of military service." At the time the announcement
was published in banner headlines -- but was not followed by concrete action of any kind, and seemed
no more than a sop to the demagogues. The police -- perennially complaining of being overworked and
short handed -- did not seem eager to actually use its scarce resources in this cause.
Some things changed, however, in the past half year. The Gaza War, prosecuted ruthlessly and
ending with a proclamation of victory, culminated with a visible effort to reinstate the Israeli
Defence Forces on the pedestal from which they had been steadily slipping down in the past
decade.
And the wartime also saw a massive campaign of detention and intimidation against dissidents, on
a scale unprecedented in recent years. More than 800 anti-war activists -- most but not all of them
Arabs -- were detained during and immediately following the three weeks of the war. Some, to be sure,
for such acts as stone-throwing and blocking roads, where detention can be considered legitimate --
but in all too many cases, the alleged "crime" was opposition to the war and nothing but
that.
Moreover, several organizers -- including a recently elected Tel-Aviv-Jaffa Municipal councilor
-- were taken from their homes to meet with Security Service operatives, and threatened with
prosecution on charges of "Aiding the Enemy in Wartime" (which would entail life
imprisonment).
In the immediate aftermath of the war Avigdor Lieberman launched his infamous "No Loyalty -- No
Citizenship" elections campaign -- and having gotten more than ten percent of the vote, was in a
position to demand and obtain for his party the Internal Security portfolio, which supervises the
police.
Lieberman's slogan had been in general interpreted as directed against Israel's Arab citizens --
and that, undoubtedly, was its main voter attraction. However, Lieberman himself repeatedly denied
being a racist: "I want action against everybody who proves unfaithful to Israel, be they Arab,
Jewish or anything else." Evidently, New Profile provided Lieberman -- and Internal Security Minister
Aaronovitch, his right-hand man -- with the ready means of demonstrating this point.
On the morning of April 26, one day before the Memorial Day for Israel's fallen soldiers, police
descended upon and "raided" (the term used in its own communiquĊ½) the homes of five New Profile
activists, who were taken off to interrogation, and their personal computers confiscated -- some of
them containing the names of various refusers and objectors and copies of these refusers'
correspondence with the army (which, by definition, the police could have obtained from the army
itself).
The activists were set free after a few hours, but on condition that they don't contact any
other member of New Profile for the next thirty days -- which, as they are central activists, means a
serious derailing of its activity. This was later amended to the five being forbidden to talk only to
each other, but free to talk with other members. In the following week, another seven people were
also invited to police interrogation -- some of them having been associated with New Profile in the
past but long since no longer involved in its activities.
Most public attention was given to the detention of the 70-years old Annelien Kish, aged 70, a
ceramics artist and grandmother of six from Ramat Hasharon -- whose non-Jewish Dutch parents had
risked themselves to save persecuted Jews during the Holocaust, and who later converted to Judaism
and married Holocaust survivor Dr. Eldad Kish.
The raid aroused many angry reactions from fellow peace, human rights and feminist groups in
Israel and abroad, and the movement got considerable attention from various media outlets.
Representatives of New Profile were greeted with a prolonged ovation at the Alternate Torch Lighting
Ceremony held by Yesh Gvul already for years on Independence Day. (Twelve people are invited to light
a torch for their contribution to the country's life in the past year -- according to rather
different criteria than the one in the governmental ceremony one kilometer away).
In an article published on April 30 in the London Guardian, New Profile activist Dimi Reider
wrote about the grave danger of further tightening the pressure to enlist:
"The coercion mounts up to a little-known but grisly statistic: the IDF, one of the most active
armies in the industrialized world, loses more soldiers through suicide than in any other way,
including the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. According to the IDF's own data, 205 soldiers died in
Israeli military action or Palestinian attacks between 2000 and 2006, the anomaly of the second
Lebanese war excluded.
During the same period of time, 236 soldiers killed themselves. Human rights organizations
suspect the latter number might be even higher. The most recent suicide in the IDF took place last
Wednesday, and hardly got any coverage at all."
A further article by a New Profile activist in the same paper (Rela Mazali on May 5) concluded
by saying: "(...) According to Ha'aretz, the criminal investigation of New Profile is motivated by
'growing concern at the defence establishment of a growing trend of draft evasion'.
It is not New Profile that is worrying them, we are just an easy scapegoat through which they
hope to sow fear and intimidate future draft dodgers. The state has thus declared a war against the
many thousands who resist the draft and refuse to place their bodies, their minds, and their morality
at the disposal of visionless politicians.
At the time of writing, New Profile and its supporters wait for the authorities' next move.
Israeli law prescribes heavy punishments for those "aiding or encouraging persons liable to military
service to evade their duty" -- up to fifteen years imprisonment if the offence was committed in
wartime (i.e., at any time in Israel's 61 years of history).
This article was up to now hardly known. The New Profile lawyer Smadar Ben Nathan would likely
counter with arguments about the Freedom of Speech and Association.
Contact: www.newprofile.org / nppr@newprofile.org
# On the evening of April 30: About fifty protestors arrived at the Dizengoff Street Police
Station in the center of Tel Aviv, protesting the persecution of New Profile and holding signs
reading "Arrest me, too!"
After some efforts at parley, the police took them at their word, pounced and dragged off eight
protesters -- six women and two men -- to spend the night in very uncomfortable detention (they were
not given beds, since "all cells were full").
The police claimed that "demonstrators had besieged the police station, disrupted its work and
refused to move to the other side of the street." Organizer Eilat Ma'oz of the Women's Coalition for
Peace said the police used excessive force against peaceful demonstrators, some of them eighty years
old.
On the following morning, the duty judge at the Magistrate's Court sharply reprimanded the
police for handcuffing the detainees brought in, and ordered the shackles removed at once -- and
subsequently, ordered them released without bail. Contact: http://coalitionofwomen.org
