Refuseniks: More Israelis Rejecting Gaza War Orders

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The majority have refused because they have grown weary of a war that has failed to achieve a resolution nor succeeded in returning the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas. Many are suffering from exhaustion, both physical and emotional.

Whatever their motivations, the unwillingness of a proportion of Israeli reserve soldiers to continue to fight poses a potential problem for Netanyahu in his pursuit of eradicating Hamas in Gaza or in conducting wars on other fronts. Simply put, the IDF cannot carry out its operations without sufficient soldiers.

Even if refusal numbers do not reach such a tipping point, their public declarations of refusal carry political clout. Historically, Israelis have refused to serve as a means to challenge the policies of the Israeli government.

A distinction should be made between the smaller numbers of Israeli teenagers who refuse to enlist in the IDF altogether and those who have refused their reserve duty. Some high-school refusers declare themselves as“conscientious objectors.” They tend to do so out of ideological contempt for the IDF and in rejection of the Israeli occupation of Palestinians.

A 2021 refusal letter by a group of high school students spelled it out:“It is our duty to oppose this destructive reality by uniting our struggles and refusing to serve these violent systems – chief among them the military.”

As I discovered in my research on Israeli peace and anti-occupation activism, these teenagers tend to be dismissed as radical anarchists. Reservists who refuse to return to serve are also not well received by the majority of Israeli society, but they are given a degree of support and sympathy because they have already served in the IDF, thus fulfilling their national duty.

As one recent refuser wrote in an opinion piece in the New York Times ,“refusing to serve is not betrayal of the state. Refusing is the only way to save it.”

History of military 'refuseniks'

The first significant wave of reservist refusal came with the outbreak of the first Lebanon war in 1982.

Almost 3,000 reservists signed a petition stating that they did not join the Israeli Defense Forces to“solve the Palestinian problem by warfare.” Some 160 were jailed. A movement called Yesh Gvul (There is a Limit) emerged and has promoted subsequent waves of reservist refusal, and supported those who are imprisoned.

The movement encouraged selective refusal to serve in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in response to the Israeli army's brutal repression of the first Palestinian uprising in 1987. As Israeli scholar Benjamin Kidron noted in his book“Refusenik!“, they marked a difference between“legitimate” duties of the IDF in defending Israel and“unacceptable” assignments in the occupied territories.