I am excited to introduce you to an initiative that is not just close to my heart, but one that Refuser Solidarity Network is supporting as it resonates deeply with the experiences of many of us in the organization, as people who refused their military service. AniSiravti, “I refused” in Hebrew, is a resistance initiative, a community, and a collection of testimonies from Israeli men and women who choose to refuse their mandatory reserve duty, as a political and public act of resistance to the occupation and the war on Gaza.
You can sign up to create a monthly donation to support the Refuser Solidarity Network and our work with new initiatives like AniSiravti here. Monthly donations give us the stability we need to plan our work: ampflying and supporting activists in Israel.
Tom Mehagar, the founder of the project, an activist, a partner, and a father, was sentenced to four weeks in military prison in 2003, due to his refusal to serve as a reserve soldier. Like most Israelis and Palestinians in the land, he woke up with his partner and daughter in Tel Aviv to a number of sirens. Just a few hours later he was watching the horrific massacre in the south and already posting on Facebook about his predictions and fears of another severe military operation, that was yet to come, in Gaza. He writes:
Tom Mehager
“I began to question the morality and logic of the occupation after I served my full military service. During my mandatory reserve duty, I served as the commander of an artillery unit at a roadblock in the West Bank. Once I understood the main purpose of my work there was to harass and humiliate Palestinians passing through, I decided I did not want to be a part of this inhumane military system and refused to continue to serve.
Israel is instilling a military dictatorship on the Palestinian people, committing human rights violations, collective punishment, and a siege on Gaza. At the onset of the war a few refusers and I thought about creating a platform for refusers to collectively declare their decision to refuse. Although we have been dismissed from reserve duty, we are using this platform to take a moral stance. To proclaim - we refused in the past and would refuse again today, even after the seventh. People need to hear our voices and know that we believe there must be red lines in Israeli society. What is happening today in Gaza is horrifying and we don’t believe this level of killing and hunger will bring anyone safety, or the hostages back.”
I’d like to share with you Yonatan Shapira’s testimony, a fellow refuser from the project:
“We conducted targeted and intentional killings and murders of civilians. At first I tried to explain it to myself in different ways…I didn't have direct contact with the acts of killing, I was a search and rescue pilot. But at some point I was able to understand that it doesn't matter much whether I am doing the “clean job” or the less terrible one and a pilot in another squadron shoots in the middle of the night and slaughters an entire family. These things horrified me and quite a few other pilots in the air force at that time.. a letter was organized later known as the pilot’s letters… We declared that we refuse to continue to be a part of the oppression and occupation and the murder of innocent people. This was 21 years ago and we were talking about isolated incidents here and there, one, two, ten, fifteen, twenty people, some children here, some children there. Today when Israel carries out a genocide in Gaza on full scale, with around thirty thousand murdered, over ten thousand children, who knows how many thousands lying under the ruble, some dead, some slowly dying from hunger and injuries, it’s clear that I would also refuse today.”
These stories of resistance need to be heard and AniSiravti has the power to bring them to light. Please help us with a monthly donation plan to sustain our work, and build and support this new community of reserve duty war resisters. You can donate here.
In solidarity,
Maya Eshel
International Solidarity Coordinator
Refuser Solidarity Network