Graduates of elite Jerusalem high school call for draft refusal
Signatory of letter from dozens of Israel Arts and Sciences Academy alumni: 'Gaza war was straw that broke the camel's back.'
Dozens of graduates of Jerusalem's prestigious Israel Arts and Sciences Academy published a letter on Sunday calling on Israelis to refuse to serve in the IDF.
"Under
a government that extinguishes any chance for political or social
normality, that is knowledgable at how to disregard and neutralize a
massive social movement, draft refusal today amounts to courageous civic
activism that has become a necessary act against crimes that we must
not accept. As a result of the most recent massacre in Gaza, an atrocity
carried out in our name against nearly 2 million people – half of them
children – we choose not to be silent," the letter stated.
One
signatory, Raya Rotem, a former literature teacher at IASA, said, "The
war in Gaza was the straw that broke the camel's back, although ideas
for this sort of initiative had been circulating among us before." The
timing of the letter had "no connection" with the election campaign,
Rotem added.
IASA
was founded in 1990 as a boarding school for outstanding students from
across the country, and is open to Jews, Muslims and Christians, secular
and religious.
Responding
to the letter, Deputy Education Minister Avi Wortzman (Habayit
Hayehudi) said, "Service in the IDF allows us to live in the State of
Isreal. The signers of the letter are using the name of the school to
gain media attention, and this is a terrible act. Because of a minority
such as this one, I initiated a day of recognition in the schools for
wounded IDF soldiers to help us educate students to say 'thank you' to
IDF soldiers. The IDF has been and remains the most moral army in the
world. I expect the authors of the letter to go to Sderot and meet with a
mother who has to run into the security room in the middle of the
night."
The
letter went on to say, "The Israeli army is responsible for the
machinery of systematic, daily repression imposed on Palestinians in the
occupied territories, and it is also partner to the repression and
domination of non-Jewish citizens of the State of Israel. The army acts
as contractor for the regime of separation based on ethnic supremacism
of Jews over Palestinians … and institutionalizes a system of ethnic
discrimination within the territory of '48 [inside Israel's
pre-Six-Day-War borders]."
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