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MK Benjamin Netanyahu at a Sunday morning meeting at the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem. (AP)
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09/06
Ynetnews |
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| By Israel Insider staff and partners September 6, 2005 |
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Following the debut of an online petition by high school students, calling on fellow teens to refuse the call to IDF service, MK Benjamin Netanyahu released a statement condemning them. Director-General of the Education Ministry Ronit Tirosh also vowed to make an educational plan to deal with military refusal. But hundreds of youth have already signed up, and organizers of the site anticipate they will gather the electronic signatures of 5,000.
Yoni Kahane, 18, of Netanya, one of the organizers, spoke with Arutz-7 about the idea. "We expect thousands more to join up," he said. The petition is headlined: "We're not enlisting in the IDF, the army of expulsion and destruction!"
It continues: "I will object to serving in an army that expelled Jews from their homes, an army that fights its nation, that burned [sic] synagogues and yeshivot, that destroyed the lives of 15,000 Jews in the Land of Israel, whose actions strengthened the terrorists..."
Kahane explained that according to law, "low motivation" is sufficient reason to be exempted from serving in the army. Arutz-7's Haggai Segal asked, "And if this exemption is not granted to you, what will you do? Go to jail?"
"Each person will react how he sees fit," Kahane said. "We have not gone into such details. [The point is that] these people have put their names and ID numbers out in the open, and the army now knows that we are potential soldiers with low motivation -- which the army usually does not want to take."
The petition caused harsh reactions across the political spectrum. "Insubordination is dangerous and it doesn't matter which side it comes from," Netanyahu said in a statement condemning the site, which has already gathered the support of hundreds of teens who have pledged to refuse army orders out of ideological opposition to the disengagement. "National security is premised on the IDF. Insubordination is a direct hit (on the army) and must not be accepted."
In the coming weeks, the youth are planning to present the signed declaration to Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, as well as to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Chief of Staff Dan Halutz.
According to a report on Ynet, Director-General of the Education Ministry Ronit Tirosh, who said she was not surprised by the petition, vowed that the Ministry would formulate a plan to deal with the military refusal, including the preparation of special lesson plans in the wake of Ynet's initial report about the petition.
"The Education Ministry clearly rejects all types of the insubordination phenomenon," she said in the report. "We are talking about undermining the basis of democracy. It's clear where it's stemming from -- anger by those boys, who met IDF soldiers in uniforms who came to evacuate them."
During the disengagement, several IDF soldiers refused orders. Some were arrested and jailed, others were granted relief from their duties.
Several rabbis encouraged the insubordination. Among them, IDF rabbi First Lieutenant Amital Bareli, who was demoted to the rank of private and sentenced to four and a half months in military prison for calling on soldiers to disobey their orders.
Finally, Tirosh called on the IDF itself to act to curb insubordination. "We are talking about a disaster those boys can bring upon an entire country, once they start undermining democratic principles," she said.
The Ynet report also stated that teachers were instructed to dedicate an hour on Sunday to discussion with students on questions related to the disengagement.
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