Tsahal refuseniks

Military disobedience has always been a sensitive topic for both the theory and practice of resistance. On the one hand, the military are in a particularly crucial position to implement the state's policies, including oppressive or criminal policies. It has always seemed that countless atrocities could have been averted if only some of the key military decision makers or executioners had decided not to obey orders. The rejection of a superior orders defense at Nuremberg, in that context, can be interpreted as an implicit instruction to troops by international law that they are ultimately answerable to values higher than those of military discipline or even national allegiance. On the other hand, states have been particularly reluctant to tolerate any form of disobedience from the ranks, and those who have dared to break orders have often been treated harshly for insubordination or even been accused of desertion. Sovereigns are obviously very sensitive about anything that might undermine the potency of their military tool, a crucial way in which they have historically claimed a monopoly of legitimate violence.

To make matters even more complicated military disobedience is increasingly a matter of interest to international law and human rights. There are several ways of conceptualizing what is at stake in refusals to serve (expression of conscientious objection or civil disobedience, for example), and each has implications for the likelihood and impact of resistance. A key question is that of the legitimate threshold of disobedience, as well as its scope.

A recent story run by the Guardian on Israeli soldiers who have refused to serve in the recent campaign in Gaza, some of them encouraged by the organization "Courage to refuse," is illustrative of the complexities. Several reservists made it clear to their commanding officers that they would refuse to be involved in that particular conflict. It is worth pointing out that this is not a new phenomenon, and that it has included in the past a number of high profile individuals, among which the nephew of Binyamin Netanyahu, airforce pilots and members of elite commandos. The motivation for refusing to serve in this case were both political and conflict specific, based essentially on a judgment that the conflict in Gaza was morally wrong and/or politically dangerous.

That made it difficult to classify them as conscientious objectors of the conventional kind, since they made it clear they would have fought in defense of Israeli land but were merely refusing to serve in that particular war. Although Israel and many countries recognize a broad form of conscientious objection (refusal to bear arms at all) as legitimate, recognition of so-called selective conscientious objection is of course much more problematic, in that it suggests that soldiers can "pick and chose" their war. Simply disapproving of a war politically is a precarious ground for disobedience. Very few countries recognize such a possibility, and it begs the question of which political opposition should be allowed to stand in the way of service. A stronger ground for refusing to serve in a war would be the likelihood that one would be ordered or somehow required to personally commit war crimes there (i.e.: a sort of anticipatory Nuremberg defense), but as US deserters in Canada have learned at their expense that is a difficult case to make, especially before one has been deployed. What is left, therefore, is a general principled and essentially moral opposition to a war that is perceived as not only unwise, but somehow morally wrong.

The question then is whether what is at stake is an essentially private issue of freedom of conscience (I should not be forced to do something that I fundamentally disapprove of on high moral grounds, at least as long as the state can reasonably accommodate my beliefs), or a more public gesture of political defiance. It seems that the logic of the refuseniks was one of civil disobedience, i.e. : to effect some form of protest and bear the consequences of their refusal. However, the Israeli army opted to send most of them home apparently, depriving their refusal of much impact in the public sphere. This is in line with a policy (for example sending them only to missions within 1967 lines) that seems to have blunted the effect of these and previous acts of disobedience. In effect, strong and oppositional political gestures are re-characterized as idiosyncratic preferences that the state can live with.

The outcome is ambiguous. On the one hand, it is in a sense to Israel's credit that it does not simply punish selective deserters to the full extent of the law (needless to say, there is probably little room within the ranks of Hamas for "opting out" of Quassam launching). On the other hand, the decision to legally "ignore" military dissenters ensures that their point is deprived of an arena, that scandal is avoided and even that, in bearing no obvious cost for their decision to disobey, military dissenters are made to seem morally irresponsible and capricious.

Still, one can't help thinking that in refusing to serve and even without their "day in court" the political weight of soldiers' decision to not serve in a particular conflict is far greater than simply depriving an army of the benefit of a few extra arms.