Kesher Talk

Israel's "refuseniks" on tour: Israelis who refuse to join the IDF have 'wowed audiences with their bravery' while on a European tour:

So how big is the 'refusenik movement'? [The] campaign avoided the question, instead claiming that resfuseniks' 'willingness to pay the price imbues our protest with a moral and political effect [that is] out of proportion to our number'.

In fact, the refusenik numbers are relatively low. The official refusenik website currently has 504 signatories, all Israeli soldiers who have 'conscientiously refused' (rather than deserted) to take part in military action at some level (4). Under the headline 'What Israeli refuseniks?', Canadian policy analyst Neil Seeman writes in America's National Review: 'One must compare the number of "refuseniks" against a standing Israeli army of 186,500 troops and 30,000 reservists. Thus the ratio of "refuseniks" to participants is less than two per 1000 draftees, a trifling figure.' (5)

Yet this apparently trifling number of refuseniks have made a big impact in Europe and the USA. ... The refuseniks' popularity seems to reveal more about how we in the West view Israel now, than it does about the refuseniks' own strength of numbers or argument. ... Just as Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon has become the punchbag of the anti-war movement, the war criminal we all love to hate, so the refuseniks have become its darlings.

posted by Howard @ 11/27/2002 08:09:13 AM