A-Infos (en) Italy, Sicilie Libertaria #453 - Sabotaging Wars: An Interview with the Refuser Solidarity Network - Israeli Voices of Resistance (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

On October 10, 2024, in anticipation of the Day of Deserters, declared 
by the Antimilitarist Assembly for November 4, this writer had the 
opportunity to meet for an online interview with a comrade, Mattan 
Helman, Executive Director of the Refuser Solidarity Network (RSN). ---- 
The mission of the RSN is to build an international base of support for 
the Israeli civil resistance movement and for Israeli conscientious 
objectors (also called "refusers") who are fighting to end the war in 
Gaza, the Israeli occupation and the oppression of the Palestinian people.
Since 2003, the Refuser Solidarity Network (RSN) has supported over a 
thousand people who have publicly refused to be part of the Israeli 
occupation of the Palestinian territories. The RSN has supported those 
who have served sentences, told the stories of those who refused through 
social media, print and email campaigns and created educational programs 
for audiences around the world highlighting the importance of resistance 
to the occupation.

Their motto "end the occupation, one soldier at a time" gives a deep 
antimilitarist sense to the Palestinian-Israeli situation by 
accentuating the relevance of the choice of individual resistance, and 
projecting "one soldier at a time" into a collective dimension. These 
acts too can bring the Israeli occupation of Palestine to a definitive 
point without further loss of human life, boycotting the war system and 
the endless cycle of violence at its origin.

Without soldiers, armies, bombs, what remains in the resolution of 
geopolitical conflicts are only diplomatic and political reasons, where 
the discourse of the people and their real needs can be worth much more 
than millions of bullets, tanks, fighters and bombs and much more than 
politicians and heads of state corrupted by multinational arms companies 
(e.g. Leonardo spa and others).

The refusers/conscientious objectors come from all segments of Israeli 
society. They are Mizrahi, Sephardi and Ashkenazi; they are religious 
and secular; they are Druze, Bedouin and Russian, they are people of all 
gender identities, from big cities and small towns, the RSN have been 
working since 2003 to support their activities. Today RSN has thousands 
of members all over the world.

Mattan, a conscientious objector, tells us his story: he joined the 
movement at 18 because he believes it is an effective way to promote 
change from the bottom up, he believes that refusing to serve in the 
military is a fundamental way to change Israeli society and government 
policy. He explains that government power in Israel as in many other 
states depends on public consent, expressed through civic participation 
and institutional cooperation. By withdrawing cooperation and shifting 
it towards supporting the resistance, people empower themselves to 
promote positive change.

The Israeli Civil Resistance Movement, RSN, and its supporters abroad, 
fight for freedom, equality and justice for all in Israel and Palestine, 
ending Israeli occupation and oppression. RSN believes this is the only 
way to end the cycle of violence and ensure the safety of Palestinians 
and Israelis.

Mattan tells us that he comes from a small Kibbutz in Haifa, north of 
Tel Aviv. Non-Jewish because his mother is not Jewish, Mattan comes from 
a family where both his father and grandfather were part of the Israeli 
army. At 15 he joined the Israeli youth movement, at 16 he realized that 
he did not want to be part of the army and understood the whole issue of 
the occupation in depth. In 2017, at the age of 18, when he 
automatically becomes "property of the Israeli army," he refuses to join 
the IDF and spends about 110 days in a military prison for Israelis only 
between 2017 and 2018. Through an NGO that is not publicly registered, 
he manages to get out of prison and his situation with the army is 
officially closed, exempting him for "bad conduct," so he moves to 
Holland where he lives. He actually defines himself as Dutch.

After about an hour of pleasant conversation, we leave Mattan, who also 
considers himself an anarchist, with the promise to continue our 
relationships and organize future collaborations.

Let us then reflect on the danger of siding with one side or the other 
of the barricade and how such a decision requires a deep analysis of 
one's values, and to what extent each individual is willing to continue 
to defend one side or the other even at the cost of human lives. There 
is too much fear of freedom, too much fear of leaving one group or 
another to be oneself and say NO, I doubt all authorities and I am free!

The analysis of the reality of the RSN leads us to make not so much a 
pacifist discourse but a humanist one, a discourse of anarchist values, 
where anarchy means mutual aid and respect for others, cooperation and 
mutual love, against historical and common objectives, all oppressive 
governments and all nationalisms.

It is not a question of being pacifists where there is no justice and 
where the hierarchical oppression of governments, religions and all 
their legal and moral superstructures will never leave human beings "in 
peace", but it is rather a question linked to the value of lives, of our 
environment, of animals and human animals.

We know well that pacifist discourses like those of Ghandi can make 
sense when there is a certain degree of attention, when there is a 
hearing, when the hunger strike is something disruptive out of the 
ordinary but not in contexts like Gaza, Sudan or Yemen where people are 
already dying of hunger and public attention looks the other way.

And we know that not even actions like the "Great Return March", the 
great return march of the Palestinian population, have led to real 
changes when, for example, on March 30, 2018, with about 17,000 
demonstrators gathered in different points near the apartheid wall 
between Gaza and Israel, the peaceful population of Gaza approached the 
border with Israel and the Israeli army opened fire without any remorse 
on the unarmed population, 14 people died and more than a thousand were 
injured.

Therefore, establishing relations with the movement of Israeli objectors 
and deserters is extremely important, because we believe this movement 
is a true ally of the Palestinians.

What is happening today in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Iran is nothing 
other than the opening of the second front of the world war after the 
invasion of Ukraine by Russia. As it happens on the Western front where 
deserters from both sides redraw the geography of the conflict, also in 
the ongoing conflict in the Middle East those who refuse to enlist give 
us the indication that it is possible to stop the war by DESERTING. In 
this context, objection and desertion are choices and practices that 
impact against the war effort in an irreversible way, actually 
preventing the war from continuing.

It is important to give visibility to this form of resistance, because 
it represents a different alternative that rejects the logic of the 
sides that does not consider either the Western side or the infamous 
Resistance Front.

Thinking of stopping the war by relying on the diplomacy of 
chancelleries or on war victory, means accepting the Geopolitical logic 
that wants the history of the planet and the human condition only as the 
product of changes of domination from one side to another.

Let's sabotage the War, let's help those who refuse to fight and kill to 
help ourselves emerge from impotence, from sterile daily indignation. 
Let's boycott the armies to start thinking about a new society from now 
on. We don't want to change masters, we don't want any more masters, we 
want a free humanity, without any "armed peace".

Even by actively cooperating by supporting Deserters and Objectors, by 
developing in the movements the culture of international solidarity that 
rejects the logic of the trenches, by relaunching the union between the 
oppressed and between people, we will really be able to stop the death 
of humanity by laying the foundations and the perspective of a planet 
that rejects any New World Order of hierarchies and death.

Gabriele Cammarata and Antonio Rampolla

http://sicilialibertaria.it
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