Refusing to serve.

AuthorSmith, Wendy E.
PositionIsraeli army recruits - Brief Article

What would you do if you were rafted into an army occupying another people's land? Noam Bahat, age twenty-one, and Shimri Tzameret, age twenty, citizens of Israel, thought about it constantly as teenagers. Three years of full time military service is mandatory for Israeli youth.

Bahat and Tzameret, along with three other young men, were recently released from prison after twenty-one months for refusing to serve in the Israeli Defense Forces. The five refuseniks spent more time in jail than any other conscientious objectors in Israeli history.

Bahat initially believed "in the white knight concept of the army," he says. "Then I started asking myself questions: What am I, an eighteen-year-old kid with no ability to influence the system, supposed to do when the state of Israel, my homeland, destroys the lives and rights of three...

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