|
|
May 17, 2002
Soldier speaks to tough crowd
Israeli "refusenik" is forced to defend the right of
his country to exist.
PAT JOHNSON REPORTER
An Israel Defence Forces (IDF) soldier spoke movingly about his
decision to refuse to serve in the occupied territories at a public
meeting in Vancouver Saturday night. Then he was put in the position
of having to defend Israel's right to exist among a crowd who compared
Israel to the Nazis and who called the creation of the Jewish state
an "imposition of a foreign population" and an example
of "European colonialism" and "ethnic cleansing."
Elad Lahav is a staff sergeant with the IDF. He is in Canada on
vacation, but was asked to speak to several audiences, including
one at the Unitarian Church in Vancouver last weekend, sponsored
by the church's social action committee and the group Jews for a
Just Peace.
Like all eligible Israelis, 27-year-old Lahav served his three years
of compulsory military service. After that stint, citizens are expected
to serve one month a year as part of a reserve company. Lahav has
done so for the past five years, but made a fateful decision shortly
before being called up in January of last year.
Like most Israelis, including his father and siblings, Lahav viewed
military service as a part of his citizenship, a necessity for preserving
the security of the Jewish state. The well-spoken soldier considers
himself a good Israeli and a staunch Zionist. During previous call-ups
as a reservist, Lahav served in the occupied territories, though
that was when the Oslo process seemed to have some life left. He
saw the role of the IDF as a transition force keeping order until
the Palestinians had their affairs in order to form their own political
and security infrastructures.
With his company, Lahav staffed security roadblocks on West Bank
roads and monitored an area between Ramallah and its neighboring
Israeli settlements. Though he acknowledged that some soldiers are
over-zealous in the execution of their duties, he insisted that
members of his company tried to treat Palestinians with respect
and efficiency. But he noted that soldiers are taught to deal with
enemy soldiers, not with civilian populations. Young Israelis are
coming out of high schools, trained to be soldiers, then placed
in positions of dealing with Palestinian civilians. The potential
is obviously there for individual soldiers to abuse their authority,
he said.
Moreover, he said, the soldiers are sometimes put in untenable situations.
They tend to be stationed in small groups, with about three vehicles
among them. In one instance, about 3,000 Palestinian demonstrators
approached their station one Friday, shouting and throwing stones,
Lahav said. Panicked, the small number of IDF soldiers used rubber
bullets to scatter the crowd. The use of force probably was not
necessary, he said, but the soldiers responded out of their natural
human sense of fear.
Since the death of the Oslo process, Lahav was no longer able to
view the IDF's action in the occupied territories as transitory,
but neither was he about to turn his back on his obligation to his
country, he said.
But then, two weeks before he was to be called up last year, seven
IDF soldiers were killed in a sneak attack on just the sort of checkpoint
Lahav's company had been stationed at. At first, despite the tragic
loss of life, Lahav viewed the incident as the sort of casualty
that can happen in a time of insurrection. Then he saw on television
the site of the attack and he realized the soldiers had been forced
to defend a geographically indefensible position. Stuck in a tiny
passageway mostly surrounded by Palestinian territory, the soldiers
were sitting ducks who didn't have a chance when the terrorist decided
to strike. After the attack, said Lahav, it came out in the media
that the Minister of Defence had recognized the potential for disaster
at that site and had tried to have it dismantled a month before
the murders. Political pressure from local settlers prevented the
soldiers' reassignment.
Lahav said he realized then that the soldiers died in vain because
of political, not military, imperatives. It was then that he decided
he would not serve in the West Bank or Gaza. But he feared facing
his colleagues in the company.
"For the last five years, I have served with them," he
said. "They are my friends."
They are also people in whose hands Lahav puts his life when they
are soldiering together. Though he expected to be accused of betrayal,
he said, half his company agreed with his decision and the other
half, though disagreeing, respected his stand.
After he told his commander that he would not serve in the occupied
territories, Lahav was punished by a military authority with 28
days incarceration. At the beginning of his 28-day sentence, he
was the only inmate there because of refusal to serve. As the intifada
heated up and more reservists were called up, the prison slowly
filled with "refuseniks." They have formed an organization
called Courage to Refuse, to which 455 IDF soldiers now belong.
Lahav asked the audience to recognize the nuances within Israeli
society over the issues confronting the state, but his pleas may
have fallen on some deaf ears. The evening continued with an exhaustive
slide presentation by Kevin Neish, a Victoria resident who travelled
to Israel recently and found himself holed up in a house in Bethlehem
as tanks roared around the building. At times, Neish and his group
of international observers acted as human shields for Palestinians
travelling around, and he also witnessed some horrific scenes, such
as an elderly man, with a bag of groceries, his body riddled with
bullets apparently because he was on the street after curfew.
However, Neish's presentation was that of a lay observer and raised
more questions than it answered. There were plenty of bullet holes
and damaged infrastructure in his photos, but he could only speculate
on how they got there. The implication, however, was that Israel
was responsible for the plight. His lengthy presentation was peppered
with such phrases as "I don't know why but...." and "I
didn't see what happened, so I don't know but...."
A man who identified himself as a Jewish veteran of the U.S. army
in the Second World War said his reading of the situation is that
the Nazi ideology has taken root in Israel.
Throughout the rest of the evening, Lahav defended Israel's right
to exist and listened respectfully as members of the audience employed
extreme rhetoric.
A Palestinian-Canadian activist challenged Lahav on how he could
make a differentiation between the occupied territories and pre-1967
Israel. According to the questioner, the Jewish state itself is
an occupying force, representing European colonialism and ethnic
cleansing.
When one audience member asked why the other Israeli voices were
not included in the event, Neish's response received an enormous
ovation from the crowd: "If you want that side of the story,
you can watch [the] news whenever you want."
^TOP
|
|
