Our Wednesday News Analysis | Why I'm Saying No to the IDF as a 17-Year-Old

An Israeli soldier takes aim from behind a vehicle at a position in the Deir Sharaf area as the Israeli army closes the western entrance leading to Nablus, in the occupied West Bank on October 12, 2022. (Photo by Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP via Getty Images)

Source: Common Dreams
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/refusing-to-serve-in-the-idf

By Fred Hidvegi
Published April 27, 2023

As my birthday approaches, I grow more and more anxious because a professional organization of trained terrorists that calls itself an army wants me to be one of them. And if I say no, a prison sentence will be the result.

As a soon-to-be 18-year-old Israeli high school student, enlistment is the only thing waiting for me after I finish my studies in six months. We have speeches every other week, telling us how important it is to serve and complete a "meaningful service" for the country. Of course, meaningful service means serving in fighting roles, roles that include violence.

Recently I got sent a message from the IDF telling me that I'm "invited" to a sorting intended for future paratroopers. I, of course, don't want to be a paratrooper. I don't want anything to do with the IDF, for obvious reasons.

I don't want to take any part in enforcing apartheid, colonialism, and violent oppression. For the IDF though, this is not enough. As I learned recently, the army does not exempt anyone purely because of ideological reasons. In other words, I can hate the army, I can hate the country, its government, and the things it stands for, but I cannot refuse to become a soldier.

Because the punishment for that is a prison sentence.

We're told to serve, have a meaningful service, and be ready to kill. That's why I will be a paratrooper if I don't resist. If I don't defy them. If we all don't defy them...

Read more: Why I'm Saying No to the IDF as a 17-Year-Old

WHY WE PALESTINIANS SEE OURSELVES IN KHADER ADNAN

Khader Adnan seen with his family in the West Bank town of Arraba, August 12, 2015. (Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

Source: +972 Magazine
https://www.972mag.com/palestinians-khader-adnan/

By Amjad Iraqi
Published May 5, 2023

Those trying to undermine public anger over the hunger striker's death don't want to talk about the violent carceral regime that he struggled against.

In another life, Khader Adnan might have been an unassuming figure. A deeply religious Muslim with a distinctive long beard, Adnan ran a bakery in his West Bank hometown of Arraba, near Jenin. He was the father of nine children who adored him and husband to Randa Adnan, whom he praised as the bedrock of their family. His affiliation with Islamic Jihad, a hardline and militant faction, discomforted many fellow Palestinians, including other Islamists. Yet even those who disagreed with his beliefs knew Adnan to be a humble, attentive man who cared for his community and practiced his politics through solidarity.

But Adnan could never have lived an ordinary life. His upbringing in the northern West Bank was overshadowed by an oppressive military apparatus that stifled his movement and operated in his homeland as it pleased. In 1999, as a student activist at Birzeit University, he was incarcerated twice by the two authorities that managed the occupation — first by the Israeli army, then by Palestinian security forces. In the 24 years since, Adnan was arrested multiple times, usually under Israeli “administrative detention,” without a sliver of due process. Most definingly, he launched several months-long hunger strikes to protest his imprisonments, becoming an icon of resistance while exasperating his Israeli captors from his prison cells and hospital beds.

Adnan’s death on Tuesday at the age of 45, following an 86-day hunger strike against his last imprisonment, has rippled throughout Palestinian society. But aside from widespread social media posts and several demonstrations, there has so far been little uproar on the streets...

Read more: Why we Palestinians see ourselves in Khader Adnan

ISRAEL’S FAULT LINES AND THE LOSS OF A JEWISH HUMANITY

RIGHT: THOMAS FRIEDMAN. PHOTO: CHARLES HAYNES/FLICKR. LEFT: HANNAH ARENDT IN 1944. PORTRAIT BY PHOTOGRAPHER FRED STEIN (1909-1967) WHO EMIGRATED 1933 FROM NAZI GERMANY TO FRANCE AND FINALLY TO THE USA. (PHOTO: DPA PICTURE ALLIANCE/ALAMY)

Source: Mondoweiss
https://mondoweiss.net/2023/05/israels-fault-lines-and-the-loss-of-a-jewish-humanity/

By MARK BRAVERMAN
Published May 3, 2023

Thomas Friedman’s condemnation of Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul is based on the false premise that the Israeli judicial system protects democracy. It never has for the millions of Palestinians under colonial rule.

Jewish American journalist and author Thomas Friedman began his career covering the Middle East in the 1980s. Friedman minted himself as a balanced observer of Israel, advancing a critique of the Jewish state while still maintaining his allegiance to the idea of a Jewish national homeland. Sensitive to Israel’s human rights problems, Friedman has argued for a more nuanced approach on the part of the U.S. government about what it means to be a “friend” to Israel. In similar fashion, he has appealed to fellow Jews to demand that Israel respect Palestinians’ rights. But his commitment to the fundamentals of the Jewish homeland project has never wavered, even now, as awareness of Israel’s crimes has increased, and the public image of Israel as an embattled victim has begun to crumble. Instead, he is serving as a rearguard for Zionism.

Friedman allowed himself to be used as a mouthpiece for U.S. President Joe Biden in a February 12 New York Times opinion piece when he conveyed Biden’s opposition to Netanyahu’s proposed judicial overhaul. Several weeks later, he urged the White House and Congress to join in “marching” with Israeli protesters “to ensure the 75th anniversary of Israeli democracy will not be its last.” Most recently, Friedman weighed in on the conundrum besetting diaspora Jews observing the current crisis, asserting that most Jewish American organizations and lay leaders now have to choose between “Israel’s prime minister and its fighter pilots.”

But it’s a false choice based on a false premise...

Read more: Israel’s fault lines and the loss of a Jewish humanity