My name is Itamar Greenberg, and I grew up in a Haredi household in Bnei Brak. When I was 12, I decided that I would enlist to the IDF to become a real part of Israeli society. I didn’t want to be a soldier, but I wanted to be an Israeli. Now that I’m 18, I know that the fact that the door into Israeli society goes through the oppression and killing of another people is a grave injustice in our society. A just society cannot be built on gun barrels. Out of commitment to this society and the desire to change it, I refuse to serve in the army. I’m enlisting to peace.
I refuse out of a commitment to both peoples. Out of a deep solidarity with the Palestinian people, who in the last year have been facing a war of extermination in Gaza, and that for many decades has been under an Israeli war machine that oppresses, expels, occupies, and extorts. I refuse out of commitment to my own people, too, that has fallen captive to dangerous nationalist ideologies.
Our society enables murder and oppression and dehumanizes the other – whether they’re a Palestinian in Gaza, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, a migrant worker, or even a Haredi. This dehumanization is tied deeply to the fact that we’ve been managing an occupation for decades. Only an end to occupation and wars could allow us to heal.
My refusal is an immediate and direct call to turn away from evil: end the war, settlement expansion, and the expulsion of Palestinians. End it now! After that comes the time to do good – allow the Palestinian people to exercise their national right to self-determination and to live as two peoples in peace and equality side by side – with democracy and peace for everyone from the river to the sea.
I refuse so we could rebuild the peace camp in Israel again. A camp of Jews and Arabs working together for a shared future and against the camp of bloodshed in government. All forces in our society – Jews, Arabs, Secular, Religious and Haredi, must oppose the forever war the extremists in government offer us. We need to formulate a unified answer for the building of a society that desires life and peace.