JERUSALEM — Decrying Israel’s treatment of Palestinians
under occupation, a group of veterans from an elite, secretive military
intelligence unit have declared they will no longer “take part in the
state’s actions against Palestinians” in required reserve duty because
of what they called “our moral duty to act.”
In
a letter sent Thursday night to their commanders as well as Israel’s
prime minister and Army chief, 43 veterans of the prestigious but
clandestine Unit 8200 complained that Israel made “no distinction
between Palestinians who are and are not involved in violence” and that
information collected “harms innocent people.” Intelligence “is used for
political persecution,” they wrote, which “does not allow for people to
lead normal lives, and fuels more violence, further distancing us from
the end of the conflict.”
The letter, revealed Friday in Israel’s Yediot Aharonot newspaper as well as The Guardian in Britain,
echoes similar periodic protests by reservists over the years,
including a group of 27 pilots who refused to participate in what Israel
calls targeted assassinations, and 13 members of the vaunted commando
unit known as Sayeret Matkal, both in 2003. But it is the first public
collective refusal by intelligence officers rather that combat troops.
Unit 8200 has a special role in Israeli society as a coveted pipeline to
its flourishing high-technology industry.
“After
our service we started seeing a more complex picture of a
nondemocratic, oppressive regime that controls the lives of millions of
people,” said one of the group’s organizers, a 32-year-old sergeant
major who was on active duty from 2001 to 2005, and spoke on the
condition of anonymity because the military prohibits Unit 8200 members
from being publicly identified.
“There
are certain things that we were asked to do that we feel do not deserve
the title of self-defense,” he added in a telephone interview. “Some of
the things that we did are immoral, and are against the things we
believe in, and we’re not willing to do these things anymore.”
The
new refuseniks said their group had begun organizing a year ago and had
not been motivated by Israel’s battle with Palestinian militants in the
Gaza Strip this summer, which another member described as “just another
chapter in this cycle of violence.”
The timing is nonetheless powerful, coming after many longtime Israeli critics of the occupation complained that their voices were stifled during a unified rallying around the war effort.
Lt.
Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli military, said specific
incidents mentioned in officers’ testimonies presented with the group’s
letter would be examined, and that “ramifications” for refusing to serve
— including possible criminal prosecution — would be handled
individually. He disputed the general thrust of the letter, saying of
Unit 8200, “there is special emphasis placed on the morality and ethics
and proper procedures and what we expect.”
“We
are facing a ruthless enemy that will carry out devastating attacks,”
Colonel Lerner said. “As such, our intelligence needs to be, I would
say, top of its professional capabilities in order to intercept that
suicide bomber, in order to forewarn Israel when there is an attack
that’s going to happen, to be able to get to them before they perform
their bad deeds.”
In
the testimony and in interviews, though, the Unit 8200 veterans
described exploitative activities focused on innocents Israel hoped to
enlist as collaborators. They said information about medical conditions
and sexual orientation were among the tidbits collected. They said that
Palestinians lacked legal protections from harassment, extortion and
injury.
“Palestinians’
sex talks were always a hot item to pass on from one person in the unit
to the other for a good laugh,” read one officer’s testimony. Another
explained, “The attitude was, ‘Why not? We can, so let’s do it.'”
Most
of the people who signed the letter are in their late 20s or early 30s
and had attained the rank of sergeant or lieutenant; many are still
active reservists, though the organizers interviewed said none had
served in recent months. That in part was because of what they called
“gray refusal,” in which officers would avoid call-ups from friendly
commanders.
A
26-year-old woman who was on active duty from 2006 and 2008 and now
works in a technology start-up said that her refusal resulted partly
from what she saw as a change in the military’s operations, or at least
Israel’s response to it.
When
14 civilians were killed alongside a Palestinian commander targeted for
assassination in 2002, she said, “it made huge waves throughout the
media and in the Army, there were committees to investigate.” In Gaza,
“things similar to that and much worse happened,” she said, but “there
was no talk about it.”
For a 29-year-old captain whose eight years in the unit ended in 2011, the transformational moment came in watching “The Lives of Others,” a 2006 film about the operations of the East German secret police.
“I
felt a lot of sympathy for the victims in the film of the
intelligence,” the captain said. “But I did feel a weird, confusing
sense of similarity, I identified myself with the intelligence workers.
That we were similar to the kind of oppressive intelligence in
oppressive regimes really was a deep realization that makes us all feel
that we have to take responsibility.”
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