An Israeli military refuser reflects on his journey of resistance and the country’s recent protests

Elazar (Elik) Elhanan was born in Jerusalem and served in an Israeli combat unit from 1995-98, after which he became a military refuser and an activist against the occupation. He is a member of the Israeli-Palestinian organization the Parents Circle – Families Forum and a founding member of Combatants for Peace. 

In 2012, Elhanan sailed on board the SV Estelle as part of the Freedom Flotilla attempting to break the siege on Gaza. He is an assistant professor of Hebrew and Yiddish literature at the City College of New York, and his work is concerned with the relations between language, identity and nation-building. 

This Q&A is the product of two conversations: excerpts from a 2020 interview by Stellan Vinthagen for the Journal of Resistance Studies and another one I conducted in 2023. I’ve edited both for clarity, concision and continuity.

Stellan Vinthagen: How did you become interested in resistance?

What drew me to resistance were the circumstances of my life and the reality around me. My grandfather was a military man turned peace activist who served as a Member of Knesset for the Jewish-Palestinian Progressive List for Peace. My mother used to take me to anti-war protests as a child, and my father — a graphic designer — provided posters and slogans. This was complemented, however, with a strong commitment to participate in that very system that we opposed, as a way to earn the privilege of protesting. In Israel, that meant taking part in a great deal of violence. My grandfather’s authority stemmed from his past as a general; my father fought in the wars we were protesting against. Believing that in order to be heard I first had to serve, I volunteered after high school for a special unit in the Israel Defense Forces, or IDF. 

My service, which focused on preparing for the bloody attrition war waged to maintain Israel’s occupation of south Lebanon, made clear the manner in which violence becomes an end rather than a means. The mightiest army in the Middle East wasted resources and lives in a war that had no coherent ends to achieve. Our mission was amorphously defined as: “bringing security to the north,” a mission in which the IDF constantly failed, using excessive force, often incompetently, thus regularly provoking Hezbollah fire on Israeli villages. 

On Sept. 4, 1997, while I was preparing for Lebanon, my 14-year-old sister, Smadar, was murdered in a Hamas suicide bombing in Jerusalem. During the seven days of mourning, surrealist scenes took place as both IDF commanders and Palestine Liberation Organization, or PLO, representatives, as well as settlers and peace activists came to offer condolences. Most seemed to share the notion that violence was a tragedy, suffering brought about in an unpredictable world by some combination of the unforeseen consequences of our actions and a vengeful nemesis. But also, that it was a moral instruction, an experience holding a lesson or a necessary social function. My reaction to this discourse was to shut off, move away and not participate; to distrust everything.

It was in this mindset that I traveled to Paris in October 2000, the day Ariel Sharon ignited the Second Intifada by visiting the Haram Al-Sharif in Jerusalem. The increasing sense of horror and frustration inspired by the terrible news from home pushed me to get involved in politics. I declared I would refuse to serve in the Israeli army any longer, and joined solidarity efforts with Palestine. It was this gesture of joining others in protest that opened a door to a world that I knew existed but had never really seen, the world of radical alternative counterculture. I met a variety of activists — anti-war, anti-racist, anti-nuclear and antifascists — who welcomed me and were happy to instruct me in their practices, culture and history, which turned out to be my own. 

I came to see nonviolence as the search for a language for community building that allows for self-expression and exchange, while engaging in fierce resistance against the hegemonic discourse.

SV: What have you learned in your experience of nonviolent resistance in movements?

My own experience in nonviolence comes from movement involvement in Israel/Palestine, in some groups that engaged mainly in dialogue meetings and public outreach, and others with modes of action that included confrontation with Israeli security services. The main thing I learned is the constant need to listen, reevaluate and redefine concepts and conventions in all that concerns the definitions of weakness and power, violent and nonviolent as well as success and failure in resistance.

I also learned the power and limits of the link between the privileges derived from service and the right to protest. This link is strongly established culturally and seems almost common sensical — a Christological tale of conversion and redemption that rings true and is demonstrably effective. Both the war in Lebanon in 1982 and the occupation of south Lebanon were brought to an end by a nonviolent mobilization in Israel, which managed to change prevailing common sense through the coupling of service and the right to protest; returning soldiers outraged by the government’s lies and the massacres in Sabrah and Shatila camps in 1982. Learning to uncouple these two things — the right to protest and the privileges derived from serving — was probably the most important political development in my life. It allowed me to view nonviolence as a concrete alternative to the existing order. Up until that point I saw it more as a personal moralist choice, consisting of standing away from the normal, violent order of things, disapproval rather than an alternative.

This uncoupling came about because such activism never had any effect against Israel’s expansionist politics in Palestine. Before the founding of Combatants for Peace, or C4P, in 2005, I was a member of Courage to Refuse, a movement that very quickly became irrelevant. The reason for that was that it chose to remain spatially, discursively and visually within Israeli discourse, while at the same time really upping the ante in relation to the state. As the movement united more than 500 reservists, combat soldiers and officers, we expected to be heard. So, while the message was phrased in a dovish Zionist idiom, protests were held in habitual sites in the center of Israel, everything was painted white and blue. 

The movement also questioned radically the Israeli social contract through the act of refusing. We moved away from the model of a right to criticize that is derived from and balanced by the assurance of service, to the act of denying service until political participation is granted. While being an important and groundbreaking movement, Courage to Refuse didn’t reach the prominence we aspired to; the public support was surprising but so was the backlash and more so the dismissal — this shift in the balance of power was too much for even the most dovish Zionist politician to support. 

In our naiveté, we thought that the problem was one of advocacy, and that by engaging in dialogue with fighters from the other side, we would be able to get our message across. The initial idea behind Combatants for Peace grew out of the understanding of privilege as a tactical advantage in both societies — that “as long as service grants me this privilege, I will be heard!” And indeed, it was an advantage. This privilege, dearly bought through participation in organized violence, gave us the legitimacy to pass criticism and stand against mainstream discourse. This capital awarded members of C4P unprecedented acceptance in either society, allowing entrance to unique sites, where we inspired some but were dismissed by most.  

This was a very confusing and disheartening experience that forced us to reexamine preconceived ideas of who is our audience, what constitutes success, what are the goals. It turned out that the valorization of service and sacrifice is not useful in the case of Israeli public opinion on the occupation, and it put us in a difficult spot when we constantly had to explain to others — but mainly to ourselves — how the service of a war criminal is being put on par with that of a terrorist. Similar impossible questions presented themselves to the parents’ circle (later reorganized to the more democratic and inclusive Families’ Forum), questions such as what grief is representative, what loss is grievable? 

This is the major lesson from my experience with nonviolent resistance; that simply by engaging with these organizations we transform them as we develop a language that can transcend epithets, a language that acts against the violence that resides in the taxonomies of the state. We had to reevaluate and reexamine every issue constantly, in the light of two political traditions: the Israeli one, which rejected us, and the Palestinian one, which we had to learn. 

Ben Case: Do you think the recent waves of protest in Israel have the potential to create broader, systemic change?

I am confident that these recent protests in Israel have the potential to effect change. In many ways, I believe they already have. However, it’s challenging to predict whether this change will be broader and systemic or merely a changing of the guard within the current power structure.

In some respects, it feels like a familiar story. Over the past six months, we witnessed an unprecedented mobilization of Israeli citizens protesting against the government and its proposed reforms while conspicuously ignoring closely related issues. These issues include the discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel, the marginalization of non-Ashkenazi Jews, and the persistent refusal to confront the reality of occupation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing in Palestine.

This mobilization seems to rely once again on a narrow concept of “respectability.” Protestors distance themselves from the current government as if it were not part of the same good old, “respectable” democratic Israel the protesters imagine they belong to. It’s fueled by massive, yet remarkably homogeneous, demonstrations held in central symbolic locations within Israel. These “upstanding” Israelis, who believe they’ve earned the right to be heard through their military service and their service to the state, often fail to acknowledge the consequences of their lifetime support for a settler colonial state, which now jeopardize their own privileges. Consequently, it appears unlikely that anything truly transformative would emerge from these protests, as they seem more like the reactionary convulsions of a sinking elite, longing for an imagined past — an equally fictional Western European whiteness to which they once belonged. 

It is true that many people moved very quickly to a practice of confrontation, adopting an activist arsenal ranging from direct confrontation with the police to military refusal and civil disobedience, and they did that with unique fervor and admirable passion. A whole number of radical slogans and concepts seeped into these activist practices, along with a willingness to listen to the activist worldview. This willingness resulting in a changing attitude of the mainstream protesters towards the “anti-occupation block” — a coalition of anti-occupation activists who congregate in the protests under the slogan “there can’t be democracy with occupation” while waving Palestinian flags. The attitude has transitioned from hostile to tolerant and occasionally even supportive. 

But this is also familiar and does not necessarily mean this time will result in any real change. As we’ve seen in past mobilizations, a temporary attraction to radicalism does not always translate into any meaningful change in the public outlook on the occupation or any meaningful recognition of the racist, settler colonialist foundations of the state.

But several things are decidedly different this time. The sheer scale of the protests is unprecedented, with a significant number of Israelis renegotiating their social contract with the state in ways that were previously unimaginable for them. Notably, there has been a surprisingly high number of reservists who have refused military service. This fact will surely impact the military, its abilities, and composition, as these reservists primarily hail from elite units and belong to Israel’s economic elite. It will also entail a change in the political behavior of these individuals who refused, who up until now automatically supported and legitimized the regime’s narrative. While their motivations may seem peculiar, their refusal represents a rupture in their relationship with the state’s power, a rupture that will be challenging to undo — making it less likely that they will return to the old status quo.

Another noteworthy development is the clear connection between judicial reform, corrupt clientelism and ongoing ethnic cleansing in Palestine. This government openly supports settler violence and does not hide that its intentions in dismantling judicial oversight is to facilitate the settlers’ continued pillaging of Palestinian land and Israeli finances. Events such as the settlers’ violence in Hawara or the admission on national television by the Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, that Israel practices apartheid, have created a totem of horror for mainstream Israelis. This has forced them to confront certain truths they could not previously associate with themselves.

To be fair, we were not very radical either when we refused. The process of change is long and unpredictable. What will emerge from this is uncertain, but there are indications toward certain possibilities. The discourse has shifted significantly over the last six months, legitimizing ideas that advocates had struggled to promote for 20 years. Terms like “apartheid” are now accepted and used in the mainstream press to describe the occupation’s reality. The settlers’ messianic project faces increased scrutiny now — after years of being marketed as just another lifestyle choice in the liberal market of identities. 

The connections between neoliberalism, corruption and state violence are regularly exposed. Israelis are even calling for the U.S. to sanction their government and calls for the suspension of military aid are heard. However, there is still a significant leap required for protesting Israelis to stop using terms like “apartheid,” “occupation,” or “state violence” as something only the new government brought about and that some imagined “we” is now tasked with stopping. This requires recognizing that these issues are things they have been complicit in and benefited from. Such a change is essential for any meaningful healing, and systemic transformation depends on this leap in political consciousness.

BC: The Israeli flag was used as a prominent symbol by the protesters. Based on your experience, what are the consequences of tying the protests to the state’s flag?

The use of the flag in the protests is a complex expression of the contradictions within the Israeli situation. It symbolizes both possibilities and limitations for radical systemic change. The reasoning behind the use of the flag is expressed and explained everywhere: It protects the protesters from the accusations that they are anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist. This is of course senseless: The government’s populist discourse did label all the protestors, and any critic, as anarchists, anti-Israeli, terrorist supporters, anti-Zionist cosmopolitans who are paid to protest by foreign powers. 

I read the obsessive use of the Israeli flag in these demonstrations in a different way. I think a golden opportunity was seized here, for a whole public to reclaim an identity that was stolen from them. After years of being denounced as anti-Israeli/anti-Jewish due to their (very mild, often apologetic) criticism of the government’s agenda, they wave the flag as if to say: “We are Israel!” However, being Israeli right now is a problem, particularly when the judicial reform strips one’s protection against international prosecution for war crimes. 

As such, the flag is a symptom of a collective fantasy — the ecstatic waving of the flag represents a liberating appropriation of a significant part of the self, which in the eyes of these Israelis, has been tarnished and stolen — and as such is not without its empowering political utility. However, I see this also as expressing an unconscious desire to displace guilt and assign the violence perpetrated by the Zionist project onto some “others” — settlers, the religious right, Likud, Mizrahim — and then disassociate from them, from anyone who isn’t “us,” i.e. isn’t a secular-liberal Labor-Zionist. This ritualistic sacrifice of the “guilty others” is meant to purify the flag, returning it to a state of adolescent latency, as we were before our darkest urges manifested themselves under the banner.

However, this use of the flag as a symptom of collective fantasy is at odds with reality. It projects a longing that seems naive and childish when confronted with the complexities of history and present social conditions. The flag holders react with hostility and rejection when faced with facts about history (acknowledging the violence throughout the Zionist movement’s existence) or our current reality (acknowledging the existence of other nationalities in Israel and other flags). This reaction underscores the inflexibility of the Israeli identity embodied in these protests and its resistance to change.

Correspondingly, within the protests, there is (very little) room for alternative expressions of Israeli identity. Variations of the Israeli flag, such as rainbow and pink flags, flags with symbols like hearts, olive branches, or handshakes replacing the Star of David, and khaki flags representing servicepersons, are tolerated and offer a glimpse of a slightly more inclusive Israeli identity. However, this very limited inclusivity becomes intolerance and outright hostility when it comes to other flags, particularly the Palestinian flag raised by members of the anti-occupation block.

The consequences of using the flag in this way are disheartening. It appears to define the boundaries of the Israeli res publica in Labor-Zionist terms, i.e. as a secular, European, nationalist space that admits only variations of a single nationalist identity. As a result, it effectively excludes approximately half of the Israeli population, ultra-orthodox Jews, Palestinians, and others from participating in the public arena, stifling any discussions that could lead to systemic change.

Nonetheless, this attachment to the flag and other symbols does provide insights for those who analyze the situation and for those who wish to impact it. For one, it highlights the enduring power of the Labor-Zionist nationalist identity, often dismissed as a myth or fabrication by both the Zionist right and the pro-Palestinian left. The construction of Israeliness as the sole possibility for Jewish self-determination and the refusal to entertain alternative formulations create a strong attachment to this Zionist identity. This attachment, faced with the identity malaise the current government imposes on it, produces the defensive chauvinism I just described, which defends the fantasy of the pure Israeli subject against rival claims of alternative identities. But it also creates openings, cracks, and fault lines where one could strike. Several initiatives like “A Land for All — Two States, One Homeland,” the “New Religious Left,” or the “New Mizrahi Civic Collective” have attempted to engage with this terrain by defining a more inclusive public sphere in a manner that takes Israeli identity insecurity into account, but their impact is very limited. Achieving meaningful change will require a significant leap on the part of the Israeli public — a willingness to overcome their fear of the other.

What we see here is in a way rather tragic. In order to win, the protesters will have to redefine their relation to the flag and to the national symbols just as those reservists who now refuse will have to redefine their relation to the state violence in which they participated, and in doing so they will lose something that is central to their identity. Yet perhaps the fervent attachment to flags and symbols has a function we can use to our benefit. As the NYC sweatshop worker and Yiddish poet Morris Rosenfeld noted, despair and heartbreak serve a function in one’s personal growth. In a poem published in 1897, the speaker is inspired by the Hanukkah candles to find solace in violent fantasies about Jews as sovereign oppressors. Later in the poem, however, the speaker is cast into dark despair as these fantasies are revealed to be irrelevant to his current political state. According to Rosenfeld, it is only in this dark state of despair that one is able to recognize the presence of the suffering other, who is nearby and could rise up in solidarity based on a recognition of mutual vulnerabilities and needs. 

What can I say? May such darkness and despair descend upon us and upon the house of Israel quickly and in our days. Amen.