Sofia Orr is likely to become the first woman since then to be jailed for refusing military service, but believes it is ‘wrong to take children and make them into soldiers’
And she's right.
Wow straight to jail with her!
Any government/country is actually just a kind of service (you pay taxes and get different goods from it). Every person should have the right to choose the provider of this service (change the country) or completely refrain from it. It means that mandatory military service is no less than slavery. People are not guilty for being born in a country they don't want to fight for (or that they don't want to fight at all)
I think you are on the right track with your ideals of the world, but I also guess you kinda know that this is not how states operate. Of course there are different types of states, but if you think of democracies, they are also not service providers to their citizens. On the contrary. Democratic states are the abstraction of all the private interests of their citizens. This is what they protect and advance. What arises out of that is that occasionally these interests will suggest a war is what the nation desires.
I do not believe in "nation's interest". That's the thing that made USA an aggressive state. It also means that the minorities' opinions are completely rejected. And yk politicians often like to do what people didn't ask them to do. Democracy is good but the right of choosing the country and freely leaving one must always be there
yes, I also don‘t believe in the nation‘s interest, yet it somehow pretty brutally exists. Something‘s got to grow, somethings got to give.
You largely can choose the provider of this service, but they will also choose you (or not).
And you can not refrain from the service while being in the community of those that don't refrain. In practice there are (nearly) no places where the community as a whole chooses to refrain.
If you're in a country with compulsory military service, make yourself interesting for other countries and leave.
You largely can choose the provider of this service,
Really? I'm from the Middle East, took me fucking ages to "change the provider".
If you’re in a country with compulsory military service, make yourself interesting for other countries and leave.
Literally not an option for 99% of people.
unless you're a US citizen which requires the extra step of completely renouncing your US citizenship or continue paying US taxes (and therefore supporting the military mostly lol) regardless of where you may live in the world
The current situation is not the best in my opinion. I think people who don't agree with it (like me) should try to change it if possible (peaceful ways are always preferred) instead of adapting to the situation. Though everyone has the right not to fight and not to do anything at all. I'm not saying that fighting the regime you don't like is mandatory
Eh... Close, but they are also a concentration social power (and fundamentally deferred violence), and rights only really exist in the context of social power. You can try and establish your own personal sovereignty but you can be sure that any state that cares to will test that. Sometimes the most you can do is accept that it is able to imprison you or go down fighting, and if you are committed to pacifism the latter is a harder option.
KEEP IT UP!
The Israeli prison system is already overflowing because of the war. Make it flow over even worse.
As of last week, the number of prisoners in Israeli jails numbered some 19,372, an increase of over 3,000 since October and significantly more than the maximum prison population of 14,500 mandated by law.
(I'm quoting Times of Israel but I don't want to link them in any form, you can find that if you want to.)
Here's another figured from them
Amid the war in the Gaza Strip, the IDF has called up a total of 287,000 reservists
The total prison capacity is 14.500, and it's already overflowing.
Even if every 50th IDF reservist or conscript refuses to go, it's still 6000 people more for them to deal with. If every tenth conscript/reservist refused, it'd be twice the total prison capacity on top of the already problematically overflowing prisons.
Swamp the system.
So even a tiny majority refusing to go and instead choosing prison over participating in genocide can have a huge impact, indirectly.
I think refusers go to military prison, not regular prison.
Well at least here in Finland, where we also have conscription, you go to a normal prison and serve six months (or at least it used to be 6months, the same as the shortest conscription time). And I'd like to note that there are several options for conscription. Full military service, unarmed military service (you serve in the military but don't have to touch weapons, you'll be a backline logistics guy or some such) and civil service, which is a bit longer, but you never serve in the military (essentially you work in an old people's home or something for 13 months).
For one, we don't have a "military prison", as that's an actual prison operated by the military. Israel does have them though. Or one with several detention centers.
Secondly, because when conscripts refuse conscription, they're still civilians, as they've not been conscripted.
This one was about a reservist, so it's probably different.
However, going by the stats on...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_military_prison
... I think the numbers might've been in the figures I mentioned (compare the occupancy numbers) and because a lot of the prisoners were prisoners of war, who go to these military prisons.
My point is that while a majority opposition to the war seems unlikely, getting 1/10th, 1/20th, or even 1/50th (=2%) of people refusing like the brave woman in the article, there'd be massive issues for the Israeli prison system.
They already started trying to lift regulations of the conditions in the prisons, so they could shove them even fuller.
Well I'll forgo my dislike of linking this bullshit "news source", so we can all be on the same page, more or less.. No pun intended.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/jails-running-out-of-room-due-to-war-prison-service-warns/
Eighty-four percent of those classified as security prisoners are currently living in an area of under three square meters in size, less than the legal limit, and 3,000 prisoners are now sleeping on mattresses on the floor rather than in beds.
This situation is potentially dangerous and “my biggest fear is that we will lose control over the prisoners in the prisons,” committee chairman MK Zvika Fogel (Otzma Yehudit) warned
They fear the exact problem I'm proposing would be easy-ish to exacerbate.
Last month [Nov -23], in the wake of Hamas’s devastating assault on southern Israel, lawmakers passed a bill allowing the government to declare an “incarceration emergency,” paving the way for the temporary lifting of restrictions on housing conditions for prisoners.
And another article from December:
##Knesset extends Israel’s ‘incarceration emergency’ as prisons near capacity
According to the Israel Prison Service, 19,756 people are currently held in Israeli jails and 'within a week or two, we will reach the maximum capacity for prisoners'
They mention the max capacity as 20,000.
And these must be military prisons as well, since I don't think POW's or "security prisoners" would be held in normal prisons.
He added that some 88% of Palestinian prisoners held for terror offenses — commonly known as security prisoners, are living in spaces of “less than three square meters per prisoner.”
Some genocidal right-wing zionist maniac then went on to say how these conditions are "a summer camp" and how "Hamas killers must be kept in the lowest conditions the law allows".
And this is following a security prisoner getting a beat to death.
Anyway thanks for coming to my TED-rant.
Well at least here in Finland, where we also have conscription, you go to a normal prison and serve six months (or at least it used to be 6months, the same as the shortest conscription time).
That hasn't been the case for ages in Finland. These days you get 6 months of "house arrest" if you refuse conscription. Electronic tagging that is. You are allowed to leave your house to go to the grocery store, to work or to study etc at predetermined and agreed upon times.
Oh man. Totaalikieltäytyminen is so easy nowadays, god damn.
I served II/09 so it's been a while.
Thanks for the info. Guess the mad bastards managed it then, because I did hang around totari people as well, and that's where I actually learned this idea. Because he had counted prison capacity in Finland and it was something like 1-3% of every batch who would need to say "nope" and they just wouldn't fit into prison anymore.
I really would like to know the details of when this was on the board being discussed.
First good news I've heard today, ty man.
Which aren't equipped to handle a significant enough mass influx of people refusing to participate in a genocide either.
We gotta admit that a large portion of the IDF are just a bunch of indoctrinated teens who had no choice. They are victims of Israel too.
I'm surprised she's the first woman to be jailed for this... really thought this was more common than that. I would totally do months of even a couple of years of prison or whatever just so not to kill X number of civilian men, women, and children on Gaza... simply because that's not something I'd be able to live with.
You are leaving out the indoctrination. If you truly despise the enemy and believe you are divinely entitled to do as you please, that helps a lot in not feeling guilt about it.
Edit: I don’t mean he doesn’t realize they are being indoctrinated, he leaves it out of his empathizing if put in that position.
I see what you're going for but you wouldn't have that prospective if you've seen even a fraction of what the IDF has been putting out.
They're in on the evil, and they revel in it.
She has actual courage. Just simply doing what you're told without question makes you as weak as the rest.
Based. Maybe she can get political asylum from Fascism.
Refusing to be complicit in Genocide? Believe it or not, Jail.
I mean there are good arguments both for and against compulsory military service, but only in countries that aren't prosecuting a war of genocide. Israel can go get fucked and so can America for propping it up. In fact it's more proper to lay the blame at America's feet than even Israels, since they've been "the adult in the room" (the one with the guns) who has been enabling it.
I mean there are good arguments both for and against compulsory military service
Are there good arguments for it? If it's compulsory, maybe you need to run your country differently so people feel its worth voluntarily defending. And/Or you can recruit heavily in areas where folks are disadvantaged and have few options, dangling education in front of them in exchange for being willing to kill or die for you.
The funny thing about knowing 18 year olds at 50+ vs being 18 years old is you can see the children these kids still are. Allowing them to join? OK. Forcing them to murder for you? As a veteran who joined at 19, no.
Or you can recruit heavily in areas where folks are disadvantaged and have few options, dangling education in front of them in exchange for being willing to kill or die for you.
This is absolutely what we do in the U.S. and it's abhorrent.
I guess what I want is for nobody to be so desperate for their basic needs that they feel compelled to kill and die in war.
And if we had a country that cared for all of its citizens and didn't start wars of aggression, maybe more people would want to enlist as they have real values to protect and have a reasonable expectation that they won't be committing atrocities?
Honestly not a criticism of you or your comment. Lot's of people are advocating for the same thing; You just said it plainly.
...Anyway, this is all terrible and we absolutely can do better, starting with building community locally, mutual aid, protesting, and listening to marginalized and oppressed people's.
When the world is run by criminals, being lawful is made a crime.
It is wrong to take anyone, including adult men, and make them into a soldier. There are times when it's unavoidable, but doing so to commit genocide is obviously always fully wrong.
It's also by definition slavery.
"Oh you're born ? Go do this!"
thetimes are a murdock owned news network.
Even a broken clock is right at least once a day.
Or said plainly: while you can't depend on any Murdoch publication to get it right all or even most of the time, you can't depend on it getting it wrong every time either. Though The Sun is very close to achieving the latter.
Paywall. There are deferments you can get so you don’t have to fight. What’s the full story here?
Concientious objectors are jailed in Israel. This isn't anything new, see here for another case https://www.amnesty.org.uk/urgent-actions/conscientious-objector-detained-israel
Hasn't it always been young people who make the bulk of the armies?
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