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War Resistance

A Mass Wave Of Israeli Army Refusal Could Be A Transformative Moment

March 8, 2023 Amjad Iraqi, +972 Magazine. , , ,
During the Second Intifada, as the Israeli army was killing thousands of Palestinians in its effort to suppress the uprising, I was part of a movement of Israeli youth and soldiers who refused to serve in the army. From the age of 18 to 20, I spent 21 months under arrest and in prison, alongside many others, in protest of the occupation and its brutal policies. It was one of the largest campaigns of conscientious objection seen in Israel — one that, until recently, seemed very unlikely to occur at such a scale again. Over the past two weeks, however, and for the first time in two decades, a new movement of Israeli army refusers has emerged in opposition to the far-right government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, as it advances a slew of anti-democratic legislation.

60 High School Seniors Refuse To Serve In The Israeli Army

January 8, 2021 Or Kashti, Haaretz. , , ,
Sixty Israelis of eligible draft age have signed a letter declaring their refusal to serve in the military because of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories. Departing from previous letters of this kind, the signatories call out the country’s education system for various issues, such as encouraging enlistment in the Israel Defense Forces and emphasizing the Jewish narrative in Bible and history classes. They also draw attention to issues they say the curriculum ignores, such as the expulsion of Arabs in 1948 and the current violation of human rights in the occupied territories. In a letter sent Tuesday to the defense and education ministries and to the IDF chief of staff, the teens wrote: “The state demands that we enlist into an army that is ostensibly meant to ensure the existence of the state.

New Publication: Countering Military Recruitment Campaigns Internationally

November 10, 2019 Staff, War Resisters International , ,
WRI's new booklet, Countering Military Recruitment: Learning the lessons of counter-recruitment campaigns internationally, is out now. The booklet includes examples of campaigning against youth militarisation across different countries with the contribution of grassroots activists. From ad-busting to nonviolence training, to promoting peace education and others, the contributions in the booklet provide many ideas for different tactics to counter the recruitment of young people. They also suggest that methods for resisting recruitment necessarily vary across different contexts.

Long-Time Peace And Justice Activist David McReynolds Dies

August 18, 2018 Staff, War Resisters League , ,
David McReynolds (1929-2018) died at 1:30 this morning, a day after being brought to Beth Israel ICU in Manhattan. David was on the WRL staff for almost 40 years (1960-1999), a long time member of the Socialist Party, who ran for Congress in 1958 and 1968, President of the United States on the SPUSA ticket in 1980 and 2000 — the first (I think) openly gay candidate for President — and for the U.S. Senate from New York in 2004 on the Green Party ticket. An internationalist and former chair of the War Resisters' International, he traveled extensively, many times to war-torn countries, once getting arrested in Red Square during an anti-nuclear protest in 1978.

Where Are Brave Military Voices Against Forever War?

September 21, 2017 Maj. Danny Sjursen, www.informationclearinghouse.info ,
By Maj. Danny Sjursen for Information Clearinghouse. In 2017, it’s near impossible to remember that today’s professional, volunteer army is less than half a century old, a product of epic failure in Vietnam. Most of America’s Founding Fathers, after all, scorned standing armies and favored a body of august, able citizen-soldiers. Something more akin to our National Guard. Deploy these men to faraway lands, so the thinking went, and each town would lose its blacksmith, carpenter, and cobbler too. Only vital interests warranted such sacrifice. Alas, it is no longer so. In truth, the “citizen-soldier” is dead, replaced—to the sound of cheers—by self-righteous subalterns hiding beneath the sly veil of that ubiquitous corporate idiom: professionalism.

Obituary: Minneapolis Pacifist Went To Prison Three Times Opposing War

April 23, 2017 Randy Furst, www.startribune.com , , ,
By Randy Furst for the Star Tribune. In the early 1950s, during the onset of the Korean War, he and his brothers Joel, Paul and Sid refused to register for the draft and were convicted in federal court and sent to prison. Someone registered them, according to his daughter, so when they got out of prison, they received a military call-up notice. They refused to show up for induction, were convicted again and sent to prison a second time. “He used to say to me, ‘One person doing something is better than a thousand people doing nothing,’ ” she recalled. “He never gave up on trying to educate and raise people’s consciousness.”
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