A group of about 200 students, led by activists at the elite Gymnasia High School in Herzliya, Israel, signed a petition refusing to be drafted into the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) over judicial reform and the Palestinian conflict.
The students, who would normally join the IDF after graduation, have joined about 10,000 reservists who have refused to show up for voluntary duty in protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial reform.
The protest is significant because of the central role the IDF plays in Israeli society, and because the students included the Palestinian issue in their petition, which leaders of the anti-reform movement have tried to avoid.
The Jerusalem Post reported:
A group of high schoolers at the Gymnasia High School in Herzliya on Sunday held an impromptu event to sign a document declaring that they would refuse to serve in the IDF to protest the judicial overhaul as well as “the occupation.”
The event had been technically canceled in an internal battle between the high school’s principal and its Parents Association, as the parents wanted to avoid potentially losing government funding for holding the anti-IDF event. Additionally, controversy over the signing ceremony led the group to delay filing the document to the IDF to a later date.
A statement signed by the high schoolers involved in the protest said, “As young women and men about to be conscripted into Israeli military service, we say NO to dictatorship in Israel and in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. We hereby declare that we refuse to join the military, until democracy is secured for all who live within the jurisdiction of the Israeli government.”
The Times of Israel added that the school’s principal had resigned after the school board tried to ban the event, fearing the loss of state funding for the school.
Herzliya is among the country’s wealthiest, most elite coastal cities.
Israel’s proposed judicial reforms largely parallel existing judicial practice in the U.S. One reform, barring courts from overruling laws or policies beacuse of “reasonableness,” passed in July and faces a Supreme Court challenge.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
Photo: file