To the Minister of Defense, Shaul Mofaz
From Misha Hadar (ID 200130623)
20 Hanoter St., Ramat Hasharon

My name is Misha Hadar, I am 19 years old (11.12.1985), and I live in Ramat Hasharon. I am writing to you to ask you to use your authority, as per section 36 of the law of security service (meshulav version) 1986, to release me from military service and to enable me to do alternative civilian service. Below are my reasons.

I would like to begin this letter by stating something that is not trivial for me and therefore I feel a need to be explicit about it. I am an Israeli, both by choice and by circumstance. I was born in London, on 11 December 1985, and I immigrated to Israel when I was four years old, in 1989, together with my parents. I have spent most of my life here, in Israel: I was educated in the national school system and this is where my friends are. I am an Israeli because of my great love for the Hebrew language - the language in which I write and read most fluently, the language whose poetry I love. This is where most of my friends live and this is the society I am most familiar with.

I want to make this statement right at the outset because I feel that for years I was not allowed, in one way or another, to think for myself - and whenever I did think for myself, the people surrounding me considered me not one of them, a traitor to this society. This, for a long time, made me feel an outsider and homeless. However, this is not right. It should be possible for me to live as an individual and as a member of society at the same time; it should be possible for me to find a balance between the fundamental values of the society in which I live, and my own values.

My reason to refuse to fulfill my duty as requested, namely, to serve in the Israeli army, results from the fact that I believe that every person, as a member of society, has the duty to be aware of what the society in which she or he lives is doing. And it is his or her duty, when that society is engaged in activities that are, to him or her, morally indefensible, to shout out about this. It is as a member of Israeli society that I am obliged to refuse service in the Israeli army. Moreover, I feel that in order to achieve the balance which I mentioned above, I must make a personal contribution to the society to which, today, I feel I belong.

I grew up in a very open and accepting family, a family that always believed in independent thinking and always allowed me to make my own decisions where I could. For years, I considered myself a pacifist - indeed, I still do not believe in violence as a means for solving problems. Sadly, nevertheless, I became powerfully aware of the fact that in our world, which is so full of violence, self-defense is sometimes necessary. This is something I learned during the six years I spent at primary school. During all of these years, children were using violence in general and also against me, all the time, and as if there was nothing more obvious.

After finishing primary school, I continued being sure that I would never carry arms, and so I didn't regard myself a candidate for the army. During seventh and eighth grade I believed - or maybe I wanted to believe - that I would somehow find a way to fulfill my military duties without betraying my own values. Then, when I started 9th grade, the El Aqsa Intifada broke out. I was alone at home, my parents and my little sister were on a holiday in Berlin. Suddenly it was war. Suddenly I saw war ships shelling Gaza from the sea. Suddenly I heard about 13 Palestinian Israelis killed by Israeli police during demonstrations; violent rioting in the streets of Jaffa; and even about Arab workers being attacked here, in Ramat Hasharon. And suddenly I felt very alone, unsure how to cope with what I was seeing and hearing.

I spent the whole of the summer holidays between ninth and tenth grade in New York with my parents. During the nights, when I couldn't sleep, I talked to my friends back home, via the internet. When I told my dad that I was bored, he gave me some news sites, so I could keep up with what was happening. During that holiday I gradually discovered what was really happening in Israel, especially in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza. By the time I returned to Israel I had made up my mind that I would not serve in the IDF. I knew I was no longer able to make this unnatural distinction between the army as an organization whose aim it is to solve problems by violent ways; the army that occupies territories - and everything that this involves; the army that is committing all the things that I was reading about - and the army which is there to protect the society in which I live.

A few weeks later I was asked, for an English test, to write about the "Seniors' Letter" which had then just recently appeared. As a result, I became interested in the letter, and it turned out that I knew one of those who wrote it, Haggai Matar. I spoke with Haggai several times and I reread the letter more than once. This is when I decided that I also wanted to sign. This was a watershed. I decided that I must know more about what was going on, that I must go to the occupied territories and see for myself.

I have visited the territories many times, since then, and I have been appalled, again and again. What I saw was something I had only read about until then: a nation under occupation. An occupation that is being conducted by kids who are from the same society as the one to which I belong, kids who are only about three to five years older than I. An occupation which is being perpetrated by an organization I will soon be called to join too.

Three years have passed since then, three years during which my conscription (and my future refusal to enlist) have been often on my mind: it is one of the subjects that I think of most. During these years, my feelings about my decision have fluctuated - I have been more and less sure. But today I am more firm than ever.

I would like to tell about two of my visits to the occupied territories, which both occurred during the last year. One was with Ta'ayush: we drove to a Palestinian village on the other side of the separation wall which is still under construction. The wall, at this point, cuts off the village from its agricultural land. We went there to pick olives because the villagers couldn't reach their olive groves which are their main source of livelihood. When we finished picking the olives we returned to the village and talked to the village people. From them I heard that their children could no longer reach their school and that it takes hours to get to the nearest-by hospital due to the IDF's roadblocks and checkpoints. I heard from them about the harassments they had suffered from Israeli soldiers, on the checkpoints and in their own village. I find it hard to say much more than that because everything sounded so alien to me, so very remote from the life I know - I am not sure how much of what I heard there and elsewhere in the occupied territories I have been able to take in.

My next visit to the occupied territories was to Abu Dis, on May 1st. When we got off the bus, we found ourselves facing a wall, nine meters in height, placed right in the middle of a village, cutting it into two. The cut was not just concrete and physical: the wall also divided between residents, some of whom are considered temporary residents while others aren't. This wall cut between families, between husbands and wives, children and their parents.

I want to grasp what this really means, but I cannot even begin to form an idea of what it would be like to be torn away from my little sister, from my parents. And so the most enduring impression I came away with from Abu Dis, even though I already knew everything I could know about it before I actually visited there, was standing there facing that nine-meter high wall in the middle of a village. I felt threatened, torn from nature, from the nature of things - it was insufferable - and I felt that even though that wall wasn't really keeping me out of anything, it was nevertheless a direct threat to me, and there were moments when I felt dizzy, moments when I felt sick.

I believed, for quite a long time, that what I object to are specific, singular events that happen in the occupied territories, and that I would therefore be able to do my army stint within the green line, in a role in which I would not feel that I was doing something immoral. As time passes, I understand more and more how mistaken that was - that opposing "singular" events is like opposing the symptoms rather than the disease itself. It is the occupation as such that is immoral, and it will infect anyone who touches it with the same immoral sickness. That is why I also refuse to enlist in order to be "the good soldier", who is there to make sure that no one on his shift will commit those "singular" acts. That would be ignoring the larger picture and I am not willing to do so. The occupation itself, too, is a symptom - the product of nationalist, violent, chauvinist values from which I keep away as from a raging fire - a fire that will not only burn me but will spread through my bones and become part of me. Such values will not be part of my life.

At high school, I studied in the drama track. In my school, the twelfth grade stages a full-length production, and my class did Jean Genet's "Screens", which portrays the story of an Arab man in Algiers during the French occupation. One of the most impressive things about this play is how Genet succeeds brilliantly to show how occupation corrupts both occupier and occupied simultaneously, and how the occupation slowly trickles into every aspect of daily life. Death comes to take the centre-stage of life, people adulate and curse it. I think it is appropriate to mention this in this context because I believe we are witnessing such a process of moral corruption and decline of occupied/occupier right now, in Israel and the occupied territories and the only way to put a halt to it is by stopping the occupation. Only then will it be possible to start thinking about how we build a normal existence in this place.

Some months ago I read a biography of Mahatma Ghandi. I learned to deeply respect him, his actions, and, no less, the way he chose to lead his life by refusing to compromise between what he believed, between his values - and what he knew he "ought" to do or what was easy. But one of the strongest impressions the book left on me was related to Ghandi's activism for the rights of the Indian population in South Africa. What he did was revolutionary in terms of his use of non-violence (one of the few cases in history during which non-violent action proved successful), and his cause was important - he fought against the deprivation of rights. But what struck me forcefully was his inability (that's how it came across to me, anyhow) to recognize and feel for the suffering of those others who are less directly related to one's self. Because from what I read, it seems that Ghandi totally ignored the great, and far more shocking, injustice that was being committed, at the same time, against the blacks in South Africa.

The ability to take note of the suffering of others, even if you yourself are suffering too, is of superior importance. The ability to have empathy for the suffering for those who are directly (and causally) related to your own suffering is one of the crucial human abilities, distinguishing between humans and animals who cannot see beyond their own pain. This is also one of the hardest abilities to achieve and we must be always on guard to maintain it. And I think we have rather lost this ability. My refusal is one way in which I struggle to keep it.

Two of my grandparents were Holocaust survivors: my mother's late father and her mother. I remember stories my grandfather told me when I was little - initially, when I was really young, they were adventure stories about his escape. Then, when I grew up a bit, there were stories about the role of the Nazis in his personal history, and finally there was the story of his whole family, most of whom were murdered with only him and his brother managing to flee. My grandmother told me less - only when I started asking her questions once I understood there was more to my grandad's adventure stories. As time passes I still discover parts of this history that I didn't know before.

I heard about ghettos, about soldiers harassing human beings. These ghettos were not built by the Nazi leadership itself, not by the ideologues of the party. It was the simple soldiers who did the job, who obeyed the orders. And similarly, the soldiers who committed the actual cruelties were not necessarily racists or anti-semites. They were soldiers who had learned to regard human life as something dispensable, soldiers who emerged from a state whose moral principles had lost grip. When I stood in Abu Dis I could not but think of the ghettos my grandfather used to tell me about, and when I traveled by the new highway number 6, past Qalqilya, I had to think of them again.

When I hear eyewitness accounts from soldiers, friends, Palestinians, about the behaviour of Israeli soldiers on the checkpoints, and in the occupied territories on the whole, I can see the same source of this evil - which has long exceeded "singular cases" - in a society in which human life has become cheap - even the lives of that society's own young people. These are lives that are dispensable, young people whose bodies and lives may be requisitioned "for the sake of the nation", a society whose moral awareness has slackened. It is only in such a society that the things that are now happening in Israel and the occupied territories can happen.

Yesterday, March 12, 2005, I accompanied a close friend on his recruitment. I support him, I support his decision to enlist, and I will always be there for him. I am also terribly sad, because a friend whom I love is leaving me (in the simplest sense, regardless of the place to which he is leaving), because I am afraid for him, worried about how the system of which from today he will be a part will affect him. But I cannot ignore my fear of what he will see and what he will have to do, of what he will hear. I want my friend back.

The army's recruitment centre has become an emotional place for me: this is where I said goodbye to friends - whether on their way to their regular service or to jail - and this is where I spent days, earlier in the process of registration. This place has come to stand for both beginnings and endings, it is a sad place, but also a place associated with joy, when a friend whom I accompanied was happy about where he was going.

I hope that the centre will become that kind of a place for me too - a place in which a not very easy period in my life will come to an end and where I can start out on my life as an independent adult. I hope that this will be possible without me being forced to defend myself against what I consider an attack on my beliefs, my moral values and my way of living.

It is because of all this that I ask you to release me from my duty to serve in the Israeli army and to enable me to do alternative civilian service, which I regard as a true contribution to the society of which I am a member. If my request is rejected then I shall be obliged to refuse military service and my conscription.

Misha Hadar