“You can’t buy paradise with blood”

Sofia Orr

On my enlistment date, February 25th, I went to the enlistment office and informed them that I refused the enlistment. They were really confused because it’s very rare and they don’t have a protocol for dealing with rejection. So they just send you from one officer to another until you meet someone senior enough to send you to a holding cell. You wait there for a few hours, sometimes even a day, and then you are tried and sentenced to any number of days in military prison.

At my first trial I was sentenced to twenty days in prison. When I got out of prison, I received a call-up notice that said, “Okay, you’ve served your sentence – you have to report in twenty-four hours.” I refused again and the cycle continued.

They can do this forever, it’s part of their intimidation. They don’t want us to know how long we’ll be in prison because it’s scarier that way, and they want to discourage people from refusing. They want us to be quiet. You notice that in prison too. When we talk about politics, we are shouted at and threatened with punishment. There’s a rule in the army that says you can’t talk about politics. However, this only applies to objectors who talk about their “left-wing” politics. This continues until you either break or are granted an exemption, which was the case for me after 85 days. I was the second conscientious objector since the start of the war. The first, Tal Mitnick, spent 185 days in prison.

However, most of the costs are social. Most people don’t object because they are afraid of losing their friends and family. That’s why we at the Mesarvot network try to be something like a social backbone for people who object for reasons of conscience. You can still get accepted to college and get a job after being rejected, but I know people who are afraid that their boss will find out about their political beliefs and fire them.

However, Palestinians with Israeli citizenship are largely silenced. They are sent to prison for posting a story on Instagram that the authorities don’t like.