Objector (2019) - full transcript

I find it ironic
that my name is Atalya.

Atalya was a queen who
ruled the Jewish people

at the biblical times.

They wrote her as evil.

She was the only queen
who appeared in the Bible,

who was the ruler by her own right

and not the wife of a king.

In the end, she was beheaded
and thrown to the dogs.

I don't think I'm like Queen Atalya.

But when people write my story,

they might show me as a traitor,



the same way they showed her.

Since you're little, you want
to grow up and be a soldier.

That's what they teach you.

I was sure I would be like a fighter,

that I'd be in a fighting unit.

My idea was always
that, if I'm in the army

at least I'll be on the frontline.

- My mother was an officer in
the army and my sister and I,

of course, were in the army.

And then all the women in the family.

So it's like the whole family

is really very much
connected through the army

and they all see the benefits of it

and they're all professionals.



We have this mission to build
a state and to keep it safe.

And you're asked about
it everywhere you go.

What did you do?

- Ah.

Maybe not the one I'm sitting on!

- Okay.

At the age of 18,

it is compulsory to join the army.

But throughout Israeli history,

there has also been a handful of people

who refused to serve
for ideological reasons.

And some end up wiling away their

would be army days in prison.

19-year-old, Tair Kaminer,
has now broken the record

for the longest imprisonment
of a woman, refusing the draft.

Tair has been
branded a parasite,

as was Sahar Vardi

who has served a number of prison terms

for refusing to serve.

- It was obvious to me after seeing

what the realities occupation

actually look like, I
wouldn't want to be part

of the forces that are implementing it.

Tea, tea.

♪ But I didn't shoot the deputy ♪

So what are your hopes for
your kids military service?

- He will go to a computer
unit and this is going

to be good to him.

- I think it's just your fantasies.

I want them to do what they want to do.

- When I wanted to not do the military

and I was kind of wondering
how do I get an exemption?

You know, you were really there

for me around the dinner table.

You stood up for me and
you're like if Amitai

doesn't want to do it, he shouldn't do it.

It is as simple as that.

- I think that it is not so simple.

Now, also being a mother
and having children,

and though it came from kindergarten,

he asked me, where is the
safe room in our house?

And I told him, okay it's your room,

just lying to him because
I didn't want to tell him

that we don't have a safe room.

Because it's not nice to
feel that you're at home

and you don't have a safe place to go

when the alarm goes on.

I think Palestinians in
Gaza want to kill me,

and I don't need the army to defend me.

I mean, jumping ship is one option.

And you can also do good if you draft.

I know they're out of teachers.

But I know they're out in the West Bank.

It's very, very important to go there

to see things for myself.

I believe that in order to achieve peace,

we need to have communication.

So why did you start
the group Visit Palestine?

- For three reasons.

First thing was to show the Israelis that,

come on, we are human beings.

We have shops, we have
schools for our kids

and we want to live.

The most important one for me was

to show the Israelis my
life under occupation.

It's policy to kick
people out of their land.

It's policy to take all these
lands, to give it to settlers.

And this way, you will
never protect Israel.

This way you are creating
more and more fighters.

- You know, most of the
soldiers in the Israeli army

don't do that.

I think it's like 10 % of the soldiers

that this is their word
and those 10 %, I think,

I don't know.

I don't know.

- People don't know the difference

between the good occupier
and the bad occupier.

For me, the Israeli army,

the Israeli government
are destroying my home.

Then they complain Palestinians
teach their children hate.

No one knows that your soldiers

are teaching our children hate.

- I really don't want to be
that soldier, that soldier.

I want to be something else.

I want to be a different voice.

- Yeah.

Israeli activists in the West
Bank are showing our kids.

There is Jewish people are human beings,

not only full armed soldiers
who wanted to attack us.

Judaism is not evil.

The occupation is evil, but not Judaism.

And that's very important.

All these houses around
you have demolition orders,

and every few months Isreali to enter

and destroy the houses.

They destroyed in this
area 12 houses last month.

- All you know is about
the wars we've had.

So you imagine the Arabs, this big enemy,

and you don't see that that's
not the reality right now.

Our big enemy, they
don't even have an army.

It's not two armies fighting each other.

So there's like this big
distance between what you hear

and what you see, when you
go to the Jordan Valley.

How did you decide to get out of the army?

- I was looking, I was looking
for the fastest way out

because I was afraid for
my own mental health.

And I went to a public psychiatrist.

And when I told him I have
anxiety about getting drafted,

he wrote me a letter of diagnoses

that I sent to the military
and I got an exemption.

- I was really afraid of how
you drifted apart from family.

So in a way, I wanted you to enlist

just so you'll be a part
of the family again.

- There is social shame.

So I think our family in
a way experienced that.

It's like as if there's
either there's something wrong

with me or I'm a liar, you know.

Yeah.

- Getting an exemption enabled
me to befriend Palestinians

and avoid all of the trauma that I see.

My friends who did go to
the military go through

as they're getting disillusioned.

Like you don't regret it?

- I don't regret it at all.

It's the best decision
I've made in my life.

- Yeah?

Yeah.

I don't know if that's helpful, but...

- See what Amitai did,
besides being cowardly,

was abuse of my profession.

Yeah.

You know, there's so many people

who avoid military conscription.

If you have an ideology,
you have to be willing

to pay the price.

- If you could go back to being 18,

would you still go to the Army?

- I heard there's still bad guys

and I think we need an army.

And that's why I would go to the army.

I would probably go to be
a combat soldier again.

- You were a soldier for so long.

- Yes, because there's a
vicious circle of violence

between us and the Palestinians.

If the Palestinians stay
in a nonviolent course,

I'm sure they'll get an advantage.

- Why shouldn't we use nonviolence?

I can't decide for them what they use,

but I can decide for myself.

- Nonviolence is the
weapon of the weak, yeah,

because the weak don't have the power.

The Palestinians don't have tanks.

The powerful will never be nonviolent

because the powerful have power.

Why should they be nonviolent?

But I think you have to
have a right perspective

on what's happening, that the Israeli army

is acting very morally.

- Settlers from the new
outpost came and beat them up.

- There's nothing they can do?

How many people attacked him?

And since and
since he was attacked,

he could not go back to
school from that time.

- What is he doing now?

He is sitting at home.

The problem is with his sight.

- I think about many of my
friends are now in the military.

Some of them are doing things

that they can say like this is amoral.

And they still do it and they find a way

to adjust their own moral perspectives.

So they'll be nice at the checkpoints.

They'll smile.

But the checkpoint will
still be a checkpoint.

- Right now, the situation
in Israel is very hard

and it's getting harder.

And more and more people are afraid

to say what they believe.

The public sphere has become dangerous.

A lot of people know that if
they will speak their mind,

they might lose their
jobs, lose their career,

lose their circle of friends,
sometimes their family.

We need to find a way to bring hope.

And I think that this
brave action of the people

who declare publicly, saying out loud,

I refused to serve in the
army because of my objection

to the occupation, can give
hope to the greater public.

And without hope, there's no struggle.

So thank you very much, all of you.

- As a movement, if users
manage to make people react

to something that they
didn't even talk about.

I mean, they're making a
change inside of Israel.

- If you want occupation to end,

you have to be where the people are.

You have to know the army
and understand the army

from the inside.

- If you want to be involved
in the political discourse

in Israel, the years to
come, Israeli society

is something that you, you know,

only from certain viewpoints.

And the army gives you-

That's not true.

You know, that's really not true.

- Okay.

That's what we think.

- I never had a good day in
three years of regular service,

and I don't know how many
years of reserve service.

But on the whole I don't
regret having been in the Army.

I think it's an important
human experience.

- What would you think
would be the best outcome,

to spend the rest of your life in jail?

- Not the rest of my life.

- Well, I would rather not
see my daughter sit in prison.

I think there are probably better ways

to reach over to Israeli
society on these issues.

- It would be hard to act
against what the army does

and the occupation

when you're a kind of advocating something

that you don't know enough about.

And you have one chance
to get to know the army.

And that's when you join it.

- You know it, it's kind
of heartbreaking because

I'm really scared of not being
part of this society because,

that you're right.

They've never moved.

This is my home.

This is where I see myself living my life.

And I don't want to abandon it

because I'm not part of the military.

- Everybody knew somebody who got killed

or was missing in action
or was a prisoner of war.

You know, I remember
sitting in the bomb shelter

and my other sister
was born during the war

and my father was away
and he didn't even know

he had a daughter.

He came back like two weeks after the war

and realized he had a new daughter

and she already had a name.

And he didn't know anything about it.

And for us as kids, it
was very frightening

because my mother was in hospital,

my father was away and we
were sitting in bomb shelters.

So this is something that my children,

these kind of feelings,
you know, they never had.

- What did you want to
be when you grow up?

- A nuclear physicist.

- Well done.

I wanted to be Xena the warrior princess.

No, I didn't want to be Xena.

I just wanted to be a warrior princess.

Which I think I am on the way of becoming.

This and also this was
built on top of the village.

It's crazy.

There was a village here.

They just came and built the settlement.

The settlers made a
complaint that the smell

from the cooking stuff is disturbing

their quality of living.

So the army came and tore it down.

The army and the settlers,

they have a really close relationship.

- What is it?

- In my mind, I kept thinking
like, of course they hate us.

Why wouldn't they hate us?

Look what we're doing to them.

So when you, when you see all that,

you can sort of understand why,

why there are terrorist attacks.

People feel cornered and
when people are cornered,

they get violent.

So if we want to stop the violence,

we shouldn't use more
force and more violence.

We should take them out of the corner.

- It's a tough song.

- What is it about?

- It's about, just to give
courage to the people in jail,

and not to give up and
not to be disappointed.

- Yes.

- That was good.

- I'm losing it.

- Stop here.

Stop here, stop here Amitai.

Stop here.

Usually it's something like
hundreds of Palestinians

used to come here.

Barbecues, sit around, and swim.

Since the number of the settlers
raised in Jordan Valley.

Now they are taking all the
water from the spring itself.

Not only the people that
keep occupying your land.

It's people controlling your life.

The problem is discrimination.

Look how green is their settlement

and how yellow is our land.

- Recently I have been going
a lot to the Jordan Valley

and to South Hebron
Hills, and I was seeing

what was really going on
in the occupied territory.

It is not equality in any way.

- It's true because it's,
what happened is the two sides

became more extreme.

Between us and the Arabs
will never be any peace.

- In a way I feel like it
is our only choice because-

- It's not the only choice, you see?

our only choice is to fight.

I'm sorry.

I remember the Jews when they
were before World War II.

Most of the Jews were against the Zionism.

What happened to my grandfather
that was anti-Zionists?

He was burned in the
village that he lived there.

You are too optimist.

But the world is not, it's not that way.

- It's hard for me to believe that.

- Maybe if it wasn't the Holocaust,

things would have been different.

But after the Holocaust, the
Jews wanted their own state.

Doesn't matter what it
will cost to the Arabs.

And your mother, she was fighting to get

to go into the army.

Now it's different.

- Most of those who are
refusing right now are women.

And it's a part of that women fighting

for freedom and fighting for equality,

but not through a macho-istic program.

- So stupid.

- When my grandfather was my
age, he saw whole villages

of Palestinians being loaded
into trucks and deported.

He told me that it broke his heart,

but also that he thought it was necessary.

Those people could have been
my friends or their families.

So I'm asking myself, what can I do?

What power do I have
to change things here?

And it's like I have the power to refuse.

- You know we are going in the road

of becoming more and more apartheid.

And I have to do whatever
I can to try and stop it.

And try to change this
road that we're walking on.

Because the army is such a powerful thing

in the Isreali society,
refusing is the way

to make people hear me.

And to try and make them open their eyes.

♪ From the Halls of Montezuma ♪

♪ To the shores of Tripoli ♪

♪ We will fight our country's battles ♪

♪ In the air, on land, and sea ♪

♪ I ain't gonna study
war no more, no more ♪

♪ I ain't gonna study war no more ♪

♪ I ain't gonna study war no more ♪

♪ Study war no more, no more ♪

I will go in with
everyone else who was supposed

to enlist today, but I will
refuse to become a soldier.

By tomorrow I'll be
transported to military prison.

When
I was my sister's age,

I wasn't as bold and
knowledgeable as she is today.

And I wasn't able to
take such a public stand.

I'm grateful to be able
to support right now.

And I hope that this can be a beginning

of a new family tradition
where it is legitimate

to not do military service
and to struggle against it.

- Dear Atalya, I know my words
won't be enough to explain

to you my feelings and my
respect and my support to you.

I'm sorry that you're
away from your family,

your friends and your beloved.

I'm sorry because the place you are in

is not your right place.

People like you are
changing the directions

from hate to love, from
enemy to friendship,

and from war to peace.

We are all proud of you.

Be strong.

Don't give up.

You are drawing a new future.

And a better future for all of us.

Your Palestinian brother, Osama.

You think it went well?

- Hopefully she could hear it.

It's quite easy to live
in Israel and forget

that there is an occupation at all.

So talking about occupation
in any way is a good thing.

And I think today's action really brought

that up and I think that was important.

While Atalya was in prison we
organized a couple of trips,

especially one to the South Hebron Hills,

to see the occupation there.

So we did it with some
American organization

and that American organization said,

we want you to write
something about the trip,

but don't use the word occupation.

So I said, how can I write
something about going

to the Hebron Hills without
using the word occupation?

And they say, "Well, we talk around it."

I thought, what kind of
games are you playing?

I mean, you need to call a spade a spade

in order to start dealing with it.

And I used the word occupation.

You know, the bad O word.

It was amazing.

And Americans really,
really didn't like it.

- I have a lot of soldiers
that put their fingers

in the wrong place.

- No.
- Shot their finger off.

- You saw that?
- I saw the finger afterwards.

- It was an accident?

- Yeah, it was an accident.

He didn't know how to do it.

He put his finger.

That's a good idea.

You shoot the gun and you put the finger.

They put it back on?

No, he just came back.

- I had a friend in prison

that was building security officer

and one time she told her
commander that if he makes her

do it at night,

be guard alone at night,
then she will shoot him.

And then he made her do it
and she aimed her weapon

at him and that's why she was in prison.

- She threatened his life, so.

- When I go to my base-

- It's a soldiers dream.

- Yeah.

We're going to be the next IDF spokesman.

- We have a thing in the
army called Ram Steim.

I talk every day with
people that are going

to be very powerful in the army.

- I'm not like running
away from my responsibility

for society, I'm doing
volunteer work for like 10,

almost 12 hours a day.

Because civil service, when
it's something I believe in,

is something that I am able to do.

- I'm very proud of your feminist views.

Because, of course, feminism
is not being like the guys.

- I feel more strongly now that

there should be an alternative route

to national service besides the army.

But the main issue is
what the hell are we doing

in occupied territories?

And the question is whether it's

for our military security reasons

or whether we're being dragged
there by messianic settlers.

- So because of the settlers
we shouldn't have an army?

Women shouldn't go to the army?

- What we're saying is the
government didn't decide

what to do with the territories.

Right?
- Right.

- But the government uses
the army to police it.

Because they still can't decide.

And what these young people
like Atalya are doing.

They're telling the government
you can't use the army

as an occupying force.
- But what is more important

to have the army or-

- It's important not to be occupiers.

I don't agree with
you, I don't think so.

- Well, I don't think we should
go on living the way we do

~if we have peace with Egypt,

and peace with Jordan and
Syria almost disappeared.

And so there is only
Lebanon and the army does

all this policing in the West Bank.

We should stop living on our sword.

- But still instead of
scrubbing pots and pans

there in the army, she
should have learn something

of value, that would have been better.

But it's my humble opinion.

- You know, scrubbing the floor
is a very important ability.

I think I'm much better at cleaning

and now than I was my whole life.

And it's really important and very useful.

- In the past, you know,

I thought that I was more in the middle

and I've probably moved
further to the left.

Because the idea that you can
affect change from the inside,

which is always what people say,

kind of go to the army
and try to effect change

from the inside.

I don't think it really works.

It's such a huge machine.

And it's so, you know, it will crush you

if you try to change.

- Yeah.

- This was the first point.

Yeah.

This is like the fence
and like the barbed wire.

These are like the birds
and they call to the wind.

- Freedom.

Freedom, yeah.

- You wrote every day?
- Yeah.

The girls I met in prison.

There's like a disproportion

between how much the army
actually uses them and needs them

to how psychologically damaged

this whole experience has made them.

You know, the meals in prison,
you can yeah, you can smile

and laugh, you can talk and
you can have eye contact.

So as I was looking at them
and be like this or something,

and then one of the
commanders like, you know,

really really yelled at me.

I was peeking when guards
like they slept there less

than I slept, like their
commanders treated them badly

the same way they sometimes treated us.

Like I could find a lot of
kindness in my commanders.

- Yeah, it's interesting to hear all that.

On the one hand, it's beautiful.

And and the other hand,

Palestinian prisoners don't have that.

- Yeah, it is Different.

This video proved
too much for Israel.

I had to meet a young Palestinian punching

and kicking a heavily
armed soldier shortly

before Ahed hit out at the soldier,

her 15-year-old cousin,
Mohammed, was wounded.

The family says he was shot in
the head by a rubber bullet.

Days later, the army arrested
her in a nighttime operation.

The 17-year-old
agreed to a plea deal

with Israeli prosecutors to
avoid more serious charges

that could've imprisoned her for years.

- Right now, it feels like things

are only getting worse all the time.

It's difficult and you don't
really see a positive future.

I come from the side of the oppressors.

Without my own choosing, of course.

But I'm an occupier.

When we're able to give up
some of those privileges

in order to struggle against
the Israeli occupation,

it's difficult, but it's not as difficult

as being a Palestinian.

- We brought you olives from our garden.

- Thank you.

I mostly came
to express my solidarity.

And I brought you this.

It's a letter from 63 Israeli
refusers which refused

to join Israeli army.

- Do we want to build a brave generation,

the generation who have a belief.

And self confidence and the
can, result really result,

to end the occupation?

When Ahed grows up, she
believes that it's her role

and her duty and her responsibility.

I highly appreciate the
struggle on your side

to pay the price for what you believe.

- Although it was hard,
it made my heart lighter

because I knew that I was doing something

I truly believe in-

- There is no gain without losses.

When your enemies become angry,

you are in the right direction.

- Living as a human being,

you always feel guilty about something.

I always felt guilty
about not doing enough.

You know?

She'll have to come to terms with it.

I can't help her.

I do what I can and I support
my kids who do more than I do.

So all I can do is support
them, then I do that.

And it's my little bit of
fighting the occupation

through other people,
through subcontractors.

- What I mean is like,

if we'll have more than
60 conscientious objectors

at the same time, we'll shut down

the military prison system.

Because there's only place
for 80 conscientious objectors

and there are other girls in prison.

That's like my dream.

They won't even have a place
in prison to put us all in.

- 6312th graders have signed

an open letter to the government

indicating their refusal to serve.

- We-
- We-

We young people write
this letter as a statement

of our refusal to join the army.

For the good of all
of us between the Jordan River

and the sea.

We must end
occupation and reach peace.

And reach peace.

- Achieve peace.
- Achieve peace.

- What's the event title?

It's about the-
- The letter.

We're trying to get people to sign up.

It's going to be.

I really, really don't have any...

- Inspiration?

- No, well that too but,
I don't have the energy

to deal with violence.

And now you have to give a speech.

- Which I haven't written anything of.

- I would say a year
ago there was only you

and two others refusing.

And now more than 100 people
have signed a refusal letter.

Sounds pretty exciting.

- You are treating it as if I
was the only one who refused,

but that's not true.

I was just the only one
in prison last year.

There were more people

who supported anti-occupation, activism.