This book presents the words of men and women in Israel who refuse to do military service in the Israeli Defence Forces, so as not to participate in dirty wars in the West Bank and in Gaza.

At sixteen, I was with my best friend, a Palestinian when I received my first letter from the army. We had grown up like sisters. She glanced at the envelope. We looked at each other. Her eyes seemed to say: ‘Do you know what you are going to do?’ Then she said: ‘Do you know how difficult life will become, if you don’t go into the army?’ And, at that moment I realised that I couldn’t do military service. I did not want to be a good soldier in their apartheid system.

It takes some courage to refuse to serve in an army, when people all around you support it. Yet Israeli men and women, young and old, make that choice.

The young are forced to justify themselves in front of multiple army interrogators without any support. Their elders, some of them ex-officers, tell comrades why they cannot continue to carry out intimidation, destruction, and killing in the West Bank and Gaza.

Persons from under 20, to over 60 tell of their particular experience, each one adds nuance. They tell us about their circumstances, the government and army, and their hopes for something different. Their critical perspectives offer a challenge to the views and news that comes to us through the official Israeli media.

SOME QUOTATIONS:

"A certain number see through things and don’t go along with them. Every young recalcitrant embodies divergence, a discontinuity in this society – sometimes thought of as a monolithic militarist bloc, one in which service is almost the precondition for citizenship.

Military prison is challenging and humiliating, especially for someone who has quitted the military system long ago. In prison, they confiscated my anti-acid gastric medicine. It was like some sort of torture.

We would enter a house at two in the morning to check who was living there, threatening families with our arms. Houses were chosen at random, just to show that we were in the vicinity and that we could do such things anytime the commander let loose with arguments that more than anything were for vengeance. When I understood that there was no military reason justifying this sort of destruction, I said to myself, I couldn’t go on with this, it was time to leave.

I committed hundreds of crimes during the first intifada.

Through Combatants for Peace, I have met my best friend, a Palestinian. When he was fourteen he had stabbed two Israelis. Now he believes that the liberation of the Palestinian people does not justify stabbing innocent people.

Today the army doesn’t protect Israel anymore, rather it defends the project of colonisation.

The occupation [of the West Bank] can exist only because we live separately from Palestinians. If you live like a normal Israeli Jew, you don’t feel it.

This war won’t end – not so long as Netanyahu wants it.

If I stop struggling, who will act in my place?"

[Itamar Greenberg, he was imprisoned for 197 days for refusing to enlist in the Israeli army and was released in March 2025. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2025/03/i-couldnt-wear-a-uniform-that-symbolizes-killing-and-oppression-israeli-activist-who-refuses-to-serve-in-the-israeli-army/

https://x.com/itamar_green/status/1876716471847395380]

Reviews:
‘The brave Israelis who refuse to serve in the IDF deserve the international community’s support, especially considering the hostile climate in which they now find themselves. Certain countries in Europe, such as Germany and Britain, have seen pro-Palestinian activists smeared, censured or arrested. Yet the pressure European activists face seems trivial compared to the risks taken by a (thus far) minority of brave Israelis who refuse to march alongside the majority and choose instead to stand up to the occupation. Their stories need to be told.’ Morning Star

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: https://www.martin-barzilai.com/

Martin Barzilai was born in Montevideo (Uruguay). He has a diploma in photography from Paris’s École nationale supérieure Louis-Lumière. His first interests are in the historical, political and social problems of his continent of origin. He has also completed several photo reportages on themes in Greece, France, Tunisia and in Israel/Palestine (New York Times, Rolling Stone, Le Monde, 6 Mois, CQFD…). Between 2010 and 2015, he worked with the co-operative Sub.coop (Argentina). He worked with them on the Huis clos project (presented at the Getty Center, Los Angeles among other places). In 2017, he published Refuzniks : Dire non à l’armée en Israel, with Libertalia publishers, and next, in 2023, Cimetière fantôme – Thessalonique with the Editions Créaphis publishing house, and with the support of the Fondation pour la mémoire de la Shoah. Having taught photography in Barcelona and Buenos Aires, he now lives in Paris.