There are not many objects of conscience in Israel, but Benjamin Netanyahu’s government This doesn’t allow it either. Sofia Orr, 18 years old, He was in and out of prison several times. for refusing to join the ranks of the Israeli army. “I can’t take part in this. I do not want to be complicit in IDF atrocities (Israeli Defense Forces) with the Palestinians,” defends the young woman, and like her, 130 other people are in the same situation.
The doctor Meir Margalit, activist for peace and rights in Israel, assures LaSexta Noticias that he admires people like Sofia because “It’s not easy to be an objector in this country.” “They look at us with contempt, as if we were traitors,” he explains. But they insist. “I’m 18 years old and I don’t want to participate in this genocide“, says a young man. This is also how another Israeli expresses himself, who says that “they don’t want the violence against the Palestinians to continue.”
There are even some who dare to set their own conditions. “Okay, I’m doing my military service but not in the occupied territories”, suggests Margalit. But since October 7, everything has been much more difficult and the activist emphasizes that “as if the terrible nature of what happened on that date was not enough, the government is trying to make it worse by comparing it to the Holocaust “.
A reference which never fails and which has succeeded in creating a sort of mass hysteria which remains a year later. Dr. Daniel Filch, a member of the Israeli NGO Standing Together, says that “for a large part of Israeli society, “the war is experienced as a war of defense”.
There, cruel images do not appear in the media and some educational centers do not help either. “Here is the young man brainwashing has occurred and is beginning in kindergartens. “The word Palestinian must be scary,” adds Filch. Still, this week, 130 Israeli soldiers stood up and demanded a deal from Netanyahu’s government.
